The Department of Justice said Monday that it is aware of concerns of voter intimidation in Tuesday’s runoff election of the race for U.S. Senate in Mississippi.
“The department is aware of concerns about voter intimidation and is monitoring the situation,” a Department of Justice spokesman told TPM in a statement. “Voters that experience problems are encouraged to call 1-800-253-3931.”
The statement on Monday afternoon comes in response to news that prominent outside groups that support Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) are sending poll watchers to the state to monitor the voting process on Tuesday.
“The laws in Mississippi are unusually open to poll watching from the outside,” former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the president of the Senate Conservatives Fund, one of the outside groups supporting McDaniel, told The New York Times. “We’re going to take full advantage of that and we’re going to lay eyes on [Sen. Thad] Cochran’s effort to bring Democrats in.”
Supporters of Cochran, who McDaniel is facing off against in the runoff, have been courting Democratic voters and African-Americans in the state to vote for the incumbent senator in the runoff. The McDaniel campaign and its supporters, in response, have condemned the effort and said creates an opportunity to destroy the “integrity” of voting in the race.
If it’s an open primary, and thus an open runoff, there’s nothing McDaniel and Cooch can do about Democrats who choose to vote. They can scream about the destruction of Republican “integrity” (now there’s an oxymoron!) all they want and bring in 10,000 poll watchers, but it won’t make a bit of difference.
What do these people possibly know about " the ‘integrity’ of the voting process."? Too funny.
Wouldn’t it be great to see the black community show up en masse to vote for Cochran.
Not because of any great love for him- but just to piss off the Tea Party.
Pressure, intimidation, trouble-making… There had better be “poll-watcher watchers” so Dem voters don’t feel their cars will have their tires slashed, etc. Close-watching by DOJ is what’s needed so they can show SCOTUS things have NOT changed from the 1960s.
Exactly, except those people they want to bring in are designed to intimidate Democratic voters from voting in that open primary. Mississippi has a particular history of voter intimidation so I hope DOJ has poll watchers on the ground in huge numbers, cause a toll-free number with complaints is only gonna get you so far to protect the vote. The word “integrity” sounds like code for “keep the black voters out”. He might as well have said “purity”, because that’s what he really meant…