Losing Senate Candidate in Mississippi May Challenge Election Results, Reuters Reports

By Jonathan Kaminsky

The defeated candidate in last week’s Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate primary has taken the first step toward contesting the election outcome, as his campaign has formally requested access to the ballots used in the race.

Chris McDaniel, a state senator supported by the conservative Tea Party movement, claims that the fiercely contested election was marred by voting fraud, specifically, that illegal votes were cast by Democrats for his opponent, six-term U.S. Senator Thad Cochran.

A spokesperson for McDaniel, Noel Fritsch, stated that after examining voting records across 51 of the state’s 82 counties, the campaign identified 4,900 irregularities, most of which involve Democratic primary voters allegedly miscasting their ballots in the Republican runoff held on June 24. However, the campaign has yet to provide evidence supporting these claims.

Fritsch noted, "We are not saying Democrats are not eligible to cross over. But Democrats crossing over after voting in the Democrat primary is against state law."

On Thursday, the campaign submitted legal documents to Clayton Cochran, the senator’s son, requesting access to the ballots. Fritsch indicated that this move could lead to a formal contestation of the results, which the state Republican Party is slated to certify next week.

McDaniel lost to Cochran by more than 6,700 votes in the runoff, having previously defeated him by about 1,400 votes in the June 3 primary, while neither candidate secured an outright majority.

Many of the state’s Democrats are black, and the Cochran campaign, which reached out to black Democrats ahead of the runoff to expand its appeal, has dismissed McDaniel’s claims of illegal voting as unfounded.

"This entire challenge is baseless," said Jordan Russell, a spokesperson for the Cochran campaign. "If he wants to examine the ballots, then that’s fine; we’ll go look at the ballots."

(Reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans; Editing by Doina Chiacu)