McDaniel camp canvases ballots
In a first step toward challenging the U.S. Senate election, Chris McDaniel representatives were in all 82 counties this week canvassing ballots and looking for irregularities.
Despite claims by McDaniel representatives in Neshoba County, Election Commissioner Harold Richardson, who monitored the canvassing, said their findings were not what he would call voting irregularities.
“They haven’t told us what the irregularities are,” he said. “They don’t know what they are and we don’t know what they are.”
Richardson said two representatives had a large stack of papers with what they called irregularities.
Back for a second day on Tuesday, the McDaniel representatives refused to speak to a Neshoba Democrat reporter and complained they were intimidated by the reporter’s presence. When one of the McDaniel reps walked toward the reporter, Richardson stepped in between.
In an upstairs room in the Neshoba County Courthouse, the McDaniel representatives and one Cochran representative examined ballot boxes while Circuit Clerk Patti Duncan Lee and Richardson observed on Monday and Tuesday.
Late Tuesday they were all gone and Lee said the representatives were done and she had not been told if there were any irregularities.
After questioning Richardson about the way elections are handled in the county, he told them that “we are going to do it our way.”
“They do things differently in other counties than we do,” Richardson said. “Our way may not be the best way and it may not be a perfect way, but it’s our way. I would not go into your house and tell you what to do.
“I think we run a clean election in Neshoba County and we know what we are doing,” he continued.
The representatives took note of who was in the room. One asked a Democrat reporter what his name was.
After the reporter refused to tell his name, the angered McDaniel representative stood up and began walking toward the reporter.
Richardson, holding up his hands, told the man to sit back down.
Both campaigns have representatives in all 82 counties this week examining ballot boxes.
Neshoba Democrat
7/9/14
Magnolia Tribune
