As Chris McDaniel continues to allege illegal crossover voting in the June 24 Republican primary runoff for U.S. Senate, local Republicans are questioning the way Mississippi governs the election process and acknowledging the damage the bitter race has done to the party.
“Maybe 20 percent of the populace understands the election process, and so many other people don’t really understand the process,” Pike County Republican Party Chairman Bobby McDaniel said.
Mississippi has an open primary system, meaning voters do not register by party and can cast ballots in either party’s primary election.
However, there is one exception — “crossover voting,” a term that refers to the unlawful act of someone voting in one party’s primary, then voting in the other party’s runoff.
Allegations of crossover voting surfaced shortly after the June 24 runoff in which Sen. Thad Cochran won with a 6,800-vote margin, overcoming McDaniel’s likewise narrow victory in the June 3 primary.
The McDaniel campaign said Thursday that he intends to challenge the results to the state Republican Party, claiming illegal crossover voting gave Cochran the win.
His campaign has said it found 4,900 instance of voting irregularities so far.
That same day, he began soliciting help for expected legal expenses to challenge the election and put up a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone charged with voter fraud during the runoff.
Cochran’s success spurred widespread media attention directed at his heavy campaign efforts in recruiting Democratic voters in predominately black communities shortly before the runoff — an act that did not sit well with some Republicans.
“I don’t agree with what Cochran did,” Bobby McDaniel said.
He said Cochran’s recruitment of Democrats undermined party loyalty.
“In the past we’ve tried to grow our Republican party with conservatives and with people who thought like Republicans, but I see where in the primary runoff, we’ve reached outside of those borders, looking for votes for just one reason,” he said. “And that reason was to elect this one candidate over the previous Republican candidate that did receive the most votes in the original primary.”
Doug Rushing, a local Realtor and political independent, said he’d like to see the law changed to a closed-primary system, requiring voters to register by party and preventing people affiliated with another party from voting in the opposite primary.
“If you’re a registered Democrat, you vote Democrat,” Rushing said. “If you’re a registered Republican, you vote Republican.”
Other Republicans like Ronnie Temple believe Mississippi should adopt Louisiana’s non-partisan blanket primary system, also called a “Cajun primary” or “jungle primary.”
“In Louisiana, they put everybody in the election at one time, Republicans and Democrats, all on the same ballot,” Temple said. “You can vote for a Republican senator and a Democrat congressman all on the same day in the primary.”
Whether or not the issues lie with Mississippi’s election process, many agree that the bitterness surrounding the Cochran-McDaniel race has been detrimental to the Republican Party.
Temple, who until recently was active in the Republican Party in Pike and Amite counties since the 1980s, said he’s never seen a race as bitter as this one.
“I think this is a dagger in the GOP of Mississippi,” he said. “I’m not going to say it’s going to kill it, but it’s going to damage it tremendously. This is the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Local attorney and Cochran supporter Ben Rowley agrees with the race’s damaging effects but places the blame squarely on McDaniel’s shoulders.
“The fact that McDaniel will not concede this race and continues to make unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him by Mississippi voters drives a deeper wedge in the Mississippi GOP at a time when we should be rallying to ward off a competent and respected Democratic candidate in November,” Rowley said.
