The case hinges on access to a precinct’s ‘poll books’ that show a list of voters registered in the precinct. The ‘poll books’ are used by registered precinct volunteers to check the eligibility of each voter that comes from the line at the voting station. For each voter in line at the voting station, a precinct volunteer will place a mark by the voter’s name on the ‘poll book’ to show the voter appeared and voted. Therefore, the ‘poll books’ become the election’s ‘tally sheets’.
Note importantly that MS state election law says that all ‘Ballot Box’ materials are to be made available to the McDaniel campaign for a review.
But how are the materials defined in the ‘Ballot Box’? What are they? Well, certainly tally sheets are defined as Ballot Box materials. But the term ‘Poll Book’ does not appear in the definition. But precinct workers know for sure that the tally sheet is simply the marked up poll book.
There are 82 counties in MS. 60 of those counties provided access to the ‘poll books’ or tally sheets for the McDaniel campaign to review and they posted a deputy to monitor the reviewers so that nothing can be said to taint the review process. 60 out of 82 counties knew that the McDaniel campaign was completely with their rights to request an inspection of their poll books!
Furthermore, McDaniel’s lawyers had to file petitions for Writs of Mandamus on 19 counties controlled by the Cochran-Barbour gang in order to get access to their poll books which comprised the tally sheets. And 4 of the hearings on the Writs were won by the McDaniel lawyers. So they decided to cut it short and go to the MS Supreme Cronies of Cochran Court and get all the other 15 counties to provide access with one fell swoop. But the MS Supreme Court decided to play games with words and definitions.
To give an example that illustrates the absurdity of the MS Supreme Court decision, consider the following:
A man has a fiancee who happens to be Native American and he wants to marry her. So he applies to the state courthouse for a marriage license. The name of his fiancee happens to be ‘Horse’. The state clerk asks the man who are you going to be marrying? And the man replies ‘Horse’. The clerk then denies the license writing the reason is that a person is not allowed to marry a horse. The man says “look she’s not a Horse (poll book), she’s human (tally sheet)” and the court again says the matter is concluded and that the state asserts that people are not allowed to marry their horses.
So now the case opened today in federal court under True The Vote (TTV) and a whole lot of Mississippi voters as plaintiffs. Hopefully the federal judge will grant access to the ‘poll books’ so that the election review can be completed and a stop can be put to the nonsense coming from the Cochran-Barbour gang.
Good explanation.
Sad Republicans stoop to the same tactics as Democrats. The mere fact that the RINOs want to shut the books and not allow McDaniel to point out the illegal crossover votes shows they are out to win at any costs - even at the cost of democracy and protecting the rights of Republican voters.
I believe the problem is in the wording “general public”. Credentialed poll watchers and credentialed representatives of a party or candidate are not general public and should be allowed access to the un redacted poll books, note the page number where a possible problem exists and when they have gone through the book have the clerk take the pages with questionable entries, and furnish copies with personal information redacted for whatever they normally charge per page which has been one dollar. This has been done in some counties. I believe at Secretary Hosemann’s direction they are counting these credentialed representatives as “general public”. When we were working on the Voter ID petition drive I thought Secretary Hosemann was working for fair honest elections in Mississippi, “ one legal voter, one legal vote”. It now appears to me he wants elections weighted to his desired outcome. I’m very disappointed in him.