Editorials: Everyone says turnout is key. So why does it keep going down? | Dan Balz/The Washington Post

Tens of millions of dollars will be spent this year in an effort to boost turnout in the November elections. But the longer-term trends suggest that any marginal increase in what is expected to be a low-turnout election won’t have much effect on one of the chronic problems of America’s politics. The Center for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE) recently issued a dreary summation about participation in the primary elections so far this year. Based on the 25 states that have already held their primaries, the report chronicled a pattern of voter indifference and, in some cases, record low turnout. In 15 of the 25 states with statewide primaries, turnout was the lowest ever, and only three of the 25 saw an increase over the last mid-term election in 2010. One of those that produced increased turnout was Mississippi, but that happened during the extraordinarily contested run-off election between Sen. Thad Cochran (R) and his tea party challenger state Sen. Chris McDaniel.

Editorials: McDaniel needs to file a challenge or call it quits | Clarion-Ledger

Enough is enough. Chris McDaniel has used every excuse in the book to delay filing a challenge to incumbent Thad Cochran’s election as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. His campaign has said filing a challenge before having all evidence will prevent him from including additional evidence. They have said they need more time to gather more data. They have said they need birthdates to verify voter identities. They have said circuit clerks have prevented them from seeing public information. However, at the end of the day, McDaniel’s campaign has been given access to everything to which they are entitled under the law. And despite their assertions, introducing a challenge to the Mississippi Republican Party will in no way prevent them from presenting new information of voter fraud to a court if indeed they discover it after their challenge is filed.

Mississippi: State Supreme Court denies Chris McDaniel request to revisit ruling on poll books access | Associated Press

The Mississippi Supreme Court said Thursday that it won’t reconsider its ruling that voters’ birthdates must be redacted before poll books are opened for public inspection. State Sen. Chris McDaniel had asked the nine justices to hold a hearing and reconsider the ruling they issued last week. On Thursday, the court said no. Two justices did not participate in the ruling and three said they would have granted a hearing. McDaniel wants to see full information in poll books, including birthdates, as he prepares to challenge his 7,667-vote loss to U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in the June 24 Republican primary runoff. McDaniel campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch said Wednesday that the campaign was still gathering evidence of potential wrongdoing to prepare to file an election challenge. During a July 16 news conference, McDaniel attorneys said a challenge could be filed within the following 10 days.

Mississippi: Judge: True the Vote lawsuit not a case of voter fraud | Clarion-Ledger

The Federal judge assigned to hear Texas-based group True the Vote and 22 Mississippians’ lawsuit against Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, the state Republican Party and election commissions in nine counties said the case is pretty cut and dry in her mind. True the Vote claims it was denied access to voting records in Copiah, Hinds, Jefferson Davis, Lauderdale, Leake, Madison, Rankin, Simpson and Yazoo counties. The group also claims records have been destroyed or tampered with. U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas of Texas said today during a hearing in Jackson that case technically is about what documents can be seen. “This is not a case of voter fraud,” Atlas said. “It’s whether the National Voter Registration Act was complied with and whether it preempts state statute. This case is about transparency of the voter process with the counter issue of voter privacy.”

Editorials: Chris McDaniel should either show evidence or concede in Mississippi’s GOP primary | The Washington Post

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.

Mississippi: McDaniel case gets under way today in court | The Neshoba Democrat

A hearing was to get underway this morning at the courthouse in a suit filed by Sen. Chris McDaniel against Neshoba County Circuit Clerk Patti Duncan Lee, alleging she “withheld voter records” while his representative canvased ballots from the June 24 Republican runoff election in the race for U. S. Senate. In the suit, McDaniel claimed that Lee allegedly withheld voting records when two people representing his campaign went to canvass the ballots in the Neshoba County courthouse in early July. In response to the suit, Lee said she “properly followed the law” and gave McDaniel’s representatives more than what they wanted. Circuit Court Judge, Place 1 Marcus Gordon was to preside over the hearing beginning at 9 a.m. In the midst of McDaniel’s quest for voting irregularities, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Thursday that circuit clerks must redact voters’ birth dates before poll books are open for public inspection.

Mississippi: Hearing set in True the Vote lawsuit | Clarion-Ledger

A hearing is set for Thursday in the Texas-based group True the Vote and 22 Mississippians federal lawsuit against Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, the state Republican Party and election commission in nine counties. True the Vote claims it was denied access to voting records in Copiah, Hinds, Jefferson Davis, Lauderdale, Leake, Madison, Rankin, Simpson and Yazoo counties. The group also claims records have been destroyed or tampered with. True the Vote is looking for people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary and then illegally crossed over to vote in the June 24 Republican runoff between U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran and challenger Chris McDaniel. Many of the 22 residents who joined the lawsuit are vocal McDaniel supporters.

Mississippi: State Supreme Court Rejects McDaniel Petition To Review Poll Books | TPM

The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday rejected state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s (R) petition filed against the Harrison County clerk in order to gain access to all election records from the U.S. Senate primary runoff. McDaniel demanded “access to and full examination of all the original election materials,” including poll books. The Mississippi Attorney General and Harrison County Circuit Clerk Gayle Parker argued that a candidate’s right to review election records does not include poll books. Judge Josiah Coleman wrote in the court’s opinion that the clerk did not need to include poll books in election boxes for candidate review.

Mississippi: McDaniel lawyer: Expect runoff challenge within 10 days | Clarion-Ledger

Lawyers for Chris McDaniel say they expect to file a challenge of McDaniel’s June 24 GOP runoff loss to incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran within the next 10 days. Attorney Mitch Tyner said that despite “roadblocks” to access of voting records that have required lawsuits against county circuit clerks, the campaign has uncovered widespread illegal voting. He said it’s already enough to support a legal challenge of the Republican runoff, but the campaign is still gathering evidence and will not yet provide specifics. As has become the paradigm for the nasty, bitter battle between the six-term incumbent Republican and the tea party challenger, the Cochran campaign responded with a news conference shortly after the Wednesday McDaniel camp news conference.  “Almost a month ago, Mississippians chose their Republican nominee,” said Cochran adviser Austin Barbour. “… They have still not presented one shred of evidence. … Sadly, with their lack of evidence, they fill that gap with rhetoric, grandstanding and fundraising appeals.”

Mississippi: Hinds County GOP Chair: only 300 to 350 questionable votes | Clarion-Ledger

Hinds County GOP Chairman Pete Perry on Tuesday said only 300 to 350 questionable votes were found as the Chris McDaniel and Thad Cochran campaigns scoured records of more than 25,000 votes cast in the county in their primary runoff. Perry said he believes McDaniel’s claims of 1,500 or more potentially illegal votes — and voter fraud — in Hinds County has been “debunked.” “I guess inflation occurs in campaigns with numbers just as it does with egos,” Perry said at a press conference at the county courthouse Tuesday. McDaniel and his campaign have claimed there were widespread irregularities and voter fraud in Hinds County and statewide. They appear to be working toward a legal challenge of the runoff. Six-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Cochran defeated McDaniel in the runoff by 7,667 votes, winning 51 percent of more than 382,000 votes statewide.

Mississippi: GOPers Prep For McDaniel Lawsuit To Contest Mississippi Race | TPM

Establishment Republicans and allies of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) have scoffed at state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s (R) claims of rampant voter fraud in the runoff election between the two for U.S. Senate. But, ahead of a press conference on Wednesday where McDaniel plans to discuss the evidence he’s found, Cochran’s campaign and the Mississippi Republican Party have also taken steps to prepare for some kind of lawsuit. Since the runoff, McDaniel and his supporters have been poring over poll books in search of proof that Cochran only won the runoff through Democratic votes. McDaniel’s lawyers claim that if the state senator can prove that Cochran’s margin of victory was only through votes that shouldn’t have been counted in a Republican primary, a new election is automatically triggered (legal experts are skeptical of this). McDaniel, according to Mississippi College School of Law Professor Matthew Steffey, needs the state Supreme Court to order a new election so a legal challenge seems to be the next step.

Mississippi: Chris McDaniel asks Mississippi Supreme Court to open voting records | Associated Press

U.S. Senate challenger Chris McDaniel is taking his quest to view original voting records to the Mississippi Supreme Court. McDaniel asked Monday for an emergency order forcing Harrison County Circuit Clerk Gayle Parker to let him see original copies of poll books. He’s trying to prove people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary illegally voted in the June 24 Republican runoff won by incumbent U.S. Sen Thad Cochran. Cochran finished with a 7,667-vote margin of victory, according to official results. McDaniel ultimately is trying to persuade a court to order a new runoff, arguing his loss was tainted by illegality. His lawyers say they have a right to the full original records, including birthdates.

Mississippi: Could Chris McDaniel Get A Do-Over In The Mississippi Senate Race? | The Daily Beast

Could there be yet another election in the Republican Senate primary in Mississippi? More than two weeks after six-term incumbent Thad Cochran won the GOP runoff against Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel, campaign workers are still swarming county courthouses in the Magnolia State trying to find evidence to overturn the election. Although Cochran won by 7,667 votes on election night, McDaniel’s campaign alleges that enough votes were improperly cast to call the result into question. McDaniel has hired Mitch Tyner, a prominent Mississippi trial lawyer who was a long-shot Republican candidate for governor in 2003, to lead his legal team. In a press conference this week outside a courthouse in Jackson, McDaniel’s lawyer claimed that there were lots of allegations and reports of voter fraud in the race. At the time, when the margin between the two was only 6,700, Tyner said that the McDaniel campaign didn’t need to find that many illegal votes to force a do-over of the runoff but thought they would find ample evidence.

Mississippi: McDaniel weighs challenge in Mississippi U.S. Senate primary | Reuters

Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party-backed Mississippi U.S. Senate candidate, is preparing a possible legal challenge to his defeat in last month’s Republican primary after supporters spent Monday sorting through voting records in dozens of counties, campaign officials said. The conservative state senator has blamed his loss to U.S. Senator Thad Cochran on what he describes as illegal voting by Democrats who favored the six-term incumbent. The primary election is scheduled to be certified on Monday evening by the state Republican party, which will forward the results to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office, party spokesman Bobby Morgan said. McDaniel and his supporters allege that the Democrats in question voted in the Democratic primary and then in the Republican runoff, which is against election rules.

Mississippi: Tea party challenger wants a redo of Republican runoff in Mississippi | Los Angeles Times

Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi returned to the Senate on Monday for the first time since last month’s wild-ride election, but the Republican primary runoff he appears to have narrowly won remains far from over. Tea party challenger Chris McDaniel is poised to launch an unprecedented legal challenge after refusing to concede the June 24 election. McDaniel claimed widespread voter fraud after the Cochran campaign openly courted Democratic support at the polls. On Monday night, the Mississippi Republican Party officially certified Cochran’s victory, saying he won by 7,667 votes. But earlier in the day, more than 200 McDaniel supporters arrived at courthouses in the state’s 80 counties to scour voter logs for irregularities. The campaign has offered 15 $1,000 rewards for information leading to voter fraud convictions.

Mississippi: Chris McDaniel’s lawyer says a new Mississippi election could be ‘automatic.’ Is he right? | The Washington Post

Mitch Tyner is the lead counsel for failed Mississippi Republican Senate primary candidate Chris McDaniel’s effort to have the results of the state’s runoff election overturned. In a brief press conference on Monday, Tyner responded to a question about the margin between McDaniel and incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran — which was at about 6,700 at last count — with assurance.

We don’t have to have 6,700 (ineligible voters). However, I would be surprised if we don’t find 6,700. It’s very easy to see the Mississippi law holds that if there’s the difference between the Cochran camp and our camp — that vote difference — if there’s that many ineligible voters, then there’s automatically a new election.

In an e-mail to the Post, McDaniel campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch said that the number of “irregularities” found on ballots was at 6,900 as of last Thursday — a number that “will certainly grow.” Most of those irregularities are of the kind that has become central to McDaniel’s case: people who apparently voted in the Democratic primary and then the Republican runoff. (More background here.) So done deal, right?

Mississippi: Challenger offers bounty for vote fraud evidence | USA Today

Challenger Chris McDaniel is offering $1,000 rewards for voter fraud evidence as he moves to overturn results of the June 24 Republican Senate primary he lost to incumbent Thad Cochran. McDaniel is asking supporters for donations to fund up to 15 such bounties for evidence that leads to arrests and convictions and for help financing his challenge of the vote. He claims Cochran and others stole the primary through vote buying and other skullduggery. The Cochran campaign says the claims are baseless.

Mississippi: Lawsuit alleges voter fraud in Thad Cochran runoff win over Chris McDaniel | UPI

Conservatives backing Mississippi tea partier Chris McDaniel have filed a lawsuit against the Republican Party of Mississippi and the Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann claiming that voters who supported Sen. Thad Cochran in his come-from-behind runoff victory last week broke the law by also voting in the Democratic primary. McDaniel, a state senator who eked out a victory over Cochran in the June 3 Republican primary, has refused to concede after losing the June 24 runoff by a 6,700-vote margin. He alleges that Cochran’s successful effort to expand his voter base to include Democrats resulted in “thousands or irregularities in the voting process.” The lawsuit, filed by the conservative group True the Vote, names 13 voters who it says “double-voted” — cast ballots in Mississippi’s Democratic primary and then in the Republican runoff.

Mississippi: McDaniel still not conceding; fight over poll books continues | Mississippi Business Journal

State Sen. Chris McDaniel has presented no evidence to support his claim that voter fraud pushed Senate incumbent Thad Cochran to victory in Mississippi’s GOP runoff. And without evidence, the tea party-backed hopeful is going to have a tough time overturning Cochran’s nearly 6,800-vote win. But a week after the balloting, McDaniel isn’t giving up. McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said yesterday that the campaign continues to examine poll books for possible examples of crossover voting that is prohibited by state law — people who voted in both the Democratic primary June 3 and the Republican runoff June 24. “We haven’t determined our specific legal recourse,” Fritsch said. “We’re kind of in a holding pattern, to a certain degree, while we’re collecting evidence.” Mississippi voters don’t register by party. State law says the only people banned from voting in the June 24 Republican runoff were those who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary.

Mississippi: McDaniel not giving up on claims that voter fraud produced Cochran runoff win | Associated Press

Chris McDaniel has presented no evidence to support his claim that voter fraud pushed Senate incumbent Thad Cochran to victory in Mississippi’s GOP runoff. And without evidence, the tea party-backed hopeful is going to have a tough time overturning Cochran’s nearly 6,800-vote win. But a week after the balloting, McDaniel isn’t giving up. McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said Tuesday that the campaign continues to examine poll books for possible examples of crossover voting that is prohibited by state law — people who voted in both the Democratic primary June 3 and the Republican runoff June 24. “We haven’t determined our specific legal recourse,” Fritsch said. “We’re kind of in a holding pattern, to a certain degree, while we’re collecting evidence.”

Mississippi: Chris McDaniel, True the Vote challenge Mississippi primary vote | Washington Times

A conservative group filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday challenging the outcome of the bitter Mississippi GOP Senate primary, saying that investigators should take more time to determine whether election laws have been broken and whether illegal ballots were cast. True The Vote, which bills itself as the nation’s leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization, said that it had no choice but to file a lawsuit after the Mississippi secretary of state and Mississippi GOP refused to respond to requests to review possible “double-voting” in the state’s primary, where Sen. Thad Cochran was declared the winner over tea party-backed state Sen. Chris McDaniel. The group said the outcome could have been diluted by some of the votes cast and said it could be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

Mississippi: Cochran campaign denies vote-buying reports | Clarion-Ledger

The U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran campaign is denying reports from a conservative blogger that it was trying to buy votes in Lauderdale County. Blogger Charles C. Johnson of GotNews.com is reporting that Stevie Fielder says the Cochran campaign told him to offer black voters in the Meridian area $15 each to vote for Cochran in the June 24 GOP primary runoff against Chris McDaniel. Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell called the accusations of illegal vote buying “baseless and false. It comes from a blogger who in the last 24 hours has accused a Mississippi public official of being responsible for an individual’s death and had to retract other outlandish accusations regarding another Mississippi elected official,” Russell said. “The author of this article admits he paid his source for the story.” The report comes as McDaniel continues to examine records from the June 24 runoff which he narrowly lost and consider a challenge of the results.

Editorials: Thad Cochran’s victory shows voting rights well protected | Jeff Jacoby/The Boston Globe

Tea Party insurgent Chris McDaniel came tantalizingly close to knocking off Senator Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s Republican primary runoff last week, but a surge in black voter turnout saved the six-term incumbent’s bacon. Cochran’s election to a seventh term in November now seems a foregone conclusion, and boy, are a lot of conservatives mad. “There is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats,” McDaniel fumed on election night, slamming Cochran and the GOP establishment for “once again reaching across the aisle [and] abandoning the conservative movement.” But whatever else the election outcome meant, Cochran’s “reaching across the aisle” made his victory a noteworthy instance of something that supposedly doesn’t and can’t happen in Mississippi even today: A white GOP politician sought support among Democrats, and particularly black Democrats. And far from being politically powerless, they tipped the election.

Mississippi: Voter-Fraud Claims and Activist’s Suicide Add to Turmoil in Mississippi | New York Times

The long and bitter Republican primary fight between Senator Thad Cochran and his Tea Party challenger descended into accusations of voter fraud on Friday, with the defeated candidate, State Senator Chris McDaniel, making clear he would not accept the results anytime soon. The escalating feud raised the prospect that a seething bloc of conservative voters could sit out the November election, improving the chances of the long-shot Democratic candidate, Travis Childers. A somber note was introduced into the intraparty fight on Friday when a Tea Party leader committed suicide. The man, Mark Mayfield, had been accused of being part of a conspiracy to photograph Rose Cochran, Mr. Cochran’s wife, in the Mississippi nursing home where she lives. Mr. Mayfield, a lawyer and a leader of the Central Mississippi Tea Party, had been arrested last month and charged with conspiring to break in to the room of Mrs. Cochran, who has dementia.

Mississippi: Hinds County Republican Party Chairman: Mistakes were made, but no voter fraud found | Clarion-Ledger

Hinds County Republican Party chairman Pete Perry said Friday morning that examples of voter fraud cited by the tea party and Chris McDaniel’s campaign are simple clerical errors that were fixed. Since Tuesday’s runoff, Hinds County has been the epicenter of voter fraud allegations leveled by McDaniel and his supporters. Thursday night, McDaniel himself told a national television show that a review of some of the poll books from Hinds County turned up more than 1,000 instances where Democrats had voted in that party’s primary June 3 and illegally crossed over to vote in the GOP runoff Tuesday. Poll workers were trained extensively to prevent such crossover voting, Perry said. Hinds County’s Republican and Democratic parties switched poll books so poll workers could cross-reference voters to ensure they did not vote in the Democratic primary June 3 before giving them GOP ballots Tuesday.

Mississippi: McDaniel’s Amazing New Legal Theory For Why He Was Robbed In Runoff | TPM

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) said he hasn’t conceded to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) yet because 35,000 Democrats crossed over to vote in the runoff election for Cochran and claimed that it is illegal for voters to back one candidate in the primary but another in the general. McDaniel’s comments, which he made in an interview on Mark Levin’s radio show Wednesday night, follow a runoff election on Tuesday in which Cochran defeated McDaniel. McDaniel and his supporters have objected to the vote outcome because of Cochran’s efforts to get African Americans and Democrats to support the incumbent senator in the the Republican runoff. It’s not clear exactly where McDaniel got the 35,000 figure.

Mississippi: McDaniel supporters pore over ballots | Clarion-Ledger

A preliminary examination of ballots cast in Tuesday’s Republican U.S. Senate primary runoff between incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran and state Sen. Chris McDaniel has found irregularities in at least 800 ballots, tea party officials said. Mississippi Tea Party Chairwoman Laura Van Overschelde said Thursday that the examination of ballots isn’t complete and will continue until all ballots are examined. “Looking at the poll books, we found some evidence we are concerned about,” Overschelde said. “The investigation is still preliminary.”