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“we had a hotly contested special election for that seat and ended up with Travis Childers, an ignorant Rat. “

I am now officially concerned that something similar may happen again. The special election in MS-01 will feature a “jungle primary” (with everyone running on the same ballot irrespective of party) and, if no one gets 50%+1, the top-two vote-getters go on to a run-off. So far, about a dozen Republicans, many of them prominent in their home areas, have filed to run, and not a single Democrat has filed. The filing deadline is 8 days away (March 27), and if two, and only two Democrats (say, ex-Congressman Childress and a black Democrat officeholder with decent name-ID) file to run at the last minute, the likeliest scenario will be tht the two Democrats will make the run-off, thus guaranteeing that a Democrat wins the special election and serves in Congress until January 2017.

And if no Democrat files to run, then two Republicans will make the run-off, and there’s the risk that one of them will be a Thad Cochran-type RINO that will win the general by getting the lion’s share of the Democrat vote (a far easier task in the general than in a GOP primary, since Democrats don’t have to become Republicans for a day to cast a vote for the RINO).

I hope that MS-01 dodges the bullet this time, but even if it does, Mississippi needs to change the riles for special electins so that regular party primaries with run-offs (as in every other election in MS) are held and voters get a choice between the Republican winner and tbe Democrat winner (plus minor-party candidates, if any) in the general. Sure, it would be a bit more expensive than the current “jungle-primary-and-run-off system), given that there would be an additional round of voting, but it would avoid anomalies such as the election of a Democrat opposed by most district voters or of a RINO opposed by most of the district’s Republican voters.