Ellington

Already the most bizarre political contest in the nation so far this year, the Mississippi Republican primary for U.S. Senate took another weird turn this week when Democrats and tea-party conservatives took Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann to task for not looking more closely at charges of voter fraud.

On July 1, 13 Mississippi citizens and a Texas-based conservative nonprofit, True the Vote, which trains and deploys poll watchers in key elections, sued Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and the state Republican Party over access to voter records.

The suit, filed in federal court in Oxford, alleges that Hosemann and the state GOP unlawfully denied the group access to information that would help them look into possible irregularities in the June 24 Republican primary runoff between state Sen. Chris McDaniel and incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran.

"By preventing access to these records, (d)efendants are denying True the Vote's rights under the (National Voting Rights Act), subverting the Act's purpose and inhibiting True the Vote's efforts to carry out its voter protection and election administration reform programs and activities," the complaint states.

Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Joe Nosef told the Associated Press that the party would ask a judge to be dismissed as a defendant. Hosemann told the AP that his office doesn't possess poll books or have authority to publicly release them.

Brandon Jones, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Trust and a former legislator, notes that Hosemann was one of the loudest cheerleaders for implementation of the state's new voter ID law, used for the first time June 24 and disputes Hosemann's claims that his hands are tied in the fight over the GOP primary.

"The citizens of this state were sold a package of voting laws by leaders who told us that their main concern was election integrity. These leaders, like Secretary of State Hosemann, now have an opportunity to show that all the talk about protecting the vote wasn't politics as usual," Jones said in an emailed statement to the media earlier this week.

Jones points to the 2013 Hattiesburg mayoral race between incumbent Johnny Dupree, a Democrat, and former Councilman Dave Ware, which wound up in court when Ware alleged fraud. In that case—Jones was one of Dupree's attorneys during that trial—a judge called for a new election and Hosemann's office and the U.S. Justice Department dispatched election monitors to the polls on Election Day.

In the recent Republican U.S. Senate primary, Jones told the Jackson Free Press: "They're showing a lack of interest that make their claims about protecting the integrity of the vote ring hollow."

In July 2009, Hosemann told the Neshoba Democrat that "[w]e need to continue to prosecute those who steal your vote," but he has not publicly weighed in on the allegations in True the Vote's complaint.

An email to Hosemann's communications director seeking comment was not returned before press time.

Also this week, freelance reporter Charles C. Johnson, who writes for conservative media outlets, published a story on a website called GotNews in which he alleges the Cochran campaign used an African American pastor to pay black people $15 to vote.

Cochran campaign officials told The Clarion-Ledger's Geoff Pender that the claims are "baseless and false."

Also this morning, the McDaniel campaign announced that it would offer $1,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in a vote-buying scheme.