Monday, June 23, 2014

Watching The Watchers

Via the New York Times, the Tea Party is planning on vultching over the Senate primary run-off election in Mississippi tomorrow to make sure that there’s no voter fraud.

The groups will deploy observers in areas where Mr. Cochran is recruiting Democrats, Mr. Cuccinelli said. J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official and conservative commentator who said he was advising the effort, described the watchers as “election observers,” mostly Mississippi residents, who will be trained to “observe whether the law is being followed.”

After nearly 42 years in Washington, Mr. Cochran is facing a dire political threat from Mr. McDaniel, a former radio talk show host. Under state elections law, Democrats may vote in the runoff if they did not vote in the Democratic primary on June 3.

“The laws in Mississippi are unusually open to poll watching from the outside,” said Mr. Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general. “We’re going to take full advantage of that and we’re going to lay eyes on Cochran’s effort to bring Democrats in,” he added. “And of course, if they voted in primaries, that’s illegal.”

Elections experts say that under Mississippi law, outside election observers deployed by political action committees would need authorization from the candidate to challenge any votes. But they are allowed to monitor the election — an effort that Matthew Steffey, an election law expert at the Mississippi College School of Law, said evokes memories of the civil rights struggles of the state’s past.

So, let me get this straight: the Republicans don’t trust their own fellow Republicans at the polls so they’re sending in outside groups to watch them.  What could possibly go wrong?

One bark on “Watching The Watchers

  1. The Conservatist movement cannot fail – it can only be failed. Thus comes the Inquisitor.

    There’s a religiosity to the Teahad. Their holy writ is a combination of The Wealth of Nations, Atlas Shrugged and the collected speeches of Saint Ronnie – and they pay as much real attention to these as they did to the Testaments. I’m waiting for their creed, their loyalty oaths (Norquist’s No Taxes Ever pledge isn’t sufficiently rigorous) and the party Bureau for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

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