An attorney for the Mississippi Republican Party says state law does not prohibit people from crossing over to vote in party’s primary and another’s primary runoff, an issue in Chris McDaniel’s presumed challenge to his GOP runoff loss to Sen. Thad Cochran. “You heard me right,” said Michael Wallace, attorney for the state Republican Party. “There is an attorney general’s opinion on the subject, but that is all. The attorney general may be right. I wasn’t telling the judge that the attorney general wasn’t right. I was telling her that the issue has never gone to court. … The attorney general may be 100 percent right, but the issue has not been tested in court that I know of. It may have came up in a county court somewhere that hasn’t made it to reported cases. But to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been tested. All we have is an attorney general interpretation.”
McDaniel has been examining voting records since his June 24 Republican primary runoff loss to Cochran and has indicated he’ll file a legal challenge of the results. He’s said, among other claims, that thousands of people voted in the Democratic primary on June 3 then illegally crossed over and voted in the Republican runoff.
Wallace is representing the state GOP in a separate federal lawsuit brought by Texas-based True the Vote over access to records from the primary. He first raised the issue of whether crossover voting is illegal in a hearing in that case last week.
State, elections and party leaders, including the secretary of state, have said crossover voting is illegal. But Wallace said that’s not spelled out in law. Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann has advised election officials, based on a 1988 attorney general’s opinion, that there is a statutory prohibition to crossover voting, Hosemann spokeswoman Pamela Weaver said Tuesday.
Full Article: GOP attorney: No Miss. law prohibits crossover voting.