Because They Can
by digby
Mississippi’s governor, Haley Barbour, and its secretary of state have come up with a particularly cynical dirty trick for the November election. Let’s call it: “Where’s the Senate race?”
Defying state law, they have decided to hide a hard-fought race for the United States Senate at the bottom of the ballot, where they clearly are hoping some voters will overlook it. Their proposed design is not only illegal. It shows a deep contempt for Mississippi’s voters.
Republicans have long had a lock on the state’s two Senate seats. But this year, former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat, has been running close to Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican, in the polls. Mr. Wicker was appointed to the seat by Governor Barbour in late December after Trent Lott stepped down.
Mississippi election law clearly states that federal elections must go at the top of ballots. And the secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann, plans to list the state’s other Senate race — incumbent Thad Cochran is running far ahead of his Democratic challenger, Erik Fleming — where it belongs, right below the presidential contest.
But Mr. Hosemann argues that because the Wicker-Musgrove race is a special election to fill the remainder of Mr. Lott’s term, he is free to place it at the bottom, below state and county races.
Mr. Hosemann is insisting on that placement even after the state attorney general’s office notified him that his ballot design violates state law.
This is flat out vote suppression and they aren’t even trying to hide it. In fact, they’re proud of it. If they could get away with using the state police to run roadblocks and ask everyone who they plan to vote for before letting them through, they’d do that too.
I hope that there will be some of that big Dem money spent on voter education for stuff like this, but I don’t know if there’s enough of it or if it’s considered part of the program. But it shouldn’t have to be. The law is clear and the principle is even clearer.
The Republican party is basically a criminal operation at this point and they are operating in plain sight. Gawd help us if they stay in power for four more years.
Oh, and anyone who thinks McCain will do anything about this stuff is living in a dream world. He could do something about it right now if he wanted to. And let’s just say his behavior of the past few days doesn’t exactly lend itself to any more bragging about his honor and integrity. He’s as much a vicious partisan as Karl Rove or Tom Delay.
Dday has more in his long post about GOTV from this morning.
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