Still around, still complaining
As Mississippi sore loser Chris McDaniel continues to froth and whirl over his runoff loss to Sen. Thad Cochran, the wheels of ridiculousness continue to turn. One of the Republican Party's new arguments is that even if McDaniel
did find voters who voted both in the Democratic primary and the Republican runoff,
that's not actually against the law.
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. [...] But to the best of my knowledge, it hasn’t been tested. All we have is an attorney general interpretation.”
At issue is the wording of the statute, which says those crossover votes are illegal if done "on the same date," and the legal question is whether "on the same date" refers to what it says or if runoffs stemming from primaries "on the same date" share the prohibition.
Given that McDaniel has not actually come up with his promised evidence of widespread shenanigans, it's not likely to matter anyway. But the True the Vote voter suppression outfit—sorry, I suppose they're still pretending to be a vote "integrity" outfit, though one that focuses almost exclusively on "integrity" concerns about minority voters—filed a lawsuit demanding access to election records, and that's why this is still being fought over. And probably will be for a hundred years to come, because conservative Southerners really know how to hold a grudge.