MS is an open primary state. That means any voter (D or R) can vote in either the D or R primary.
For the runoff:
- If you voted in the D primary, you can only vote in the D runoff — if there is one (not in this case).
- If you voted in the R primary, you can only vote in the R runoff.
- If you did not vote at all in either primary, you are allowed to vote in the runoff, regardless of your party registration.
Although I don’t necessarily agree with these rules, they are quite clear to me. I don’t understand why all the confusion.
The confusion on my part was not realizing that MS is an open primary.
When the primary is open this is the kind of crap you can expect.
About a month ago I took my son to get his driver’s license renewed and register him to vote for the first time. Sometime secretly in the past 2 years - in preparation for the Senate primary with Ben Sasse running - the Nebraska R’s turned theirs into an open primary, unbeknownst to me. I’d really like to know how they did that, when, and why. An open primary is a declaration of war against the whole party system of nominating candidates.
I will note here that the MS SOS now is the same SOS who was informed in advance of printing the general election ballots in 2012 that the HI state registrar had effectively confirmed that Obama has no legally-valid Hawaii birth certificate. Not one smidgeon of integrity there, IMHO.