It took just a few words for state Sen. Chris McDaniel to stoke tea party fervor after his runoff loss in the Mississippi Republican primary to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran. “We’re not done fighting,” he said defiantly to the June 24 election-night crowd. A messy primary was about to get worse. Mr. McDaniel, who lost by about 7,600 votes, claimed that there were voting “irregularities,” insisting that those who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary illegally cast ballots three weeks later in the Republican runoff. He also argued that many voters broke an obscure and unenforceable Mississippi law that prohibits citizens from participating in a primary unless they intend to back the party’s nominee in the general election. Because Mississippi does not register voters by party, Mr. Cochran had focused on getting more left-leaning, African American voters to the polls for the runoff.
One month later, the McDaniel campaign is embroiled in a court fight over unredacted access to original voting records. This month, it offered 15 bounties of $1,000 each for any evidence of voter fraud. Campaign officials say they have found 8,300 questionable ballots from the records that they’ve examined, and Mr. McDaniel’s attorneys indicated last week that a challenge of the result would be filed by this coming weekend.
But Mr. McDaniel still has offered no evidence to back up his claims. His spokesman, Noel Fritsch, told us that the delay was “to make certain that we have our ducks all in a row.” Mr. McDaniel has now embarked on what he calls a Truth and Justice bus tour to rally supporters around the state. His campaign Web site states plainly: “Democrats steal the Mississippi runoff.”
Full Article: Chris McDaniel should either show evidence or concede in Mississippi’s GOP primary – The Washington Post.