Mississippi will not ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision of the State Supreme Court putting Willie Wilson on the Democratic presidential primary ballot. Also the state is sending revised ballots, containing Wilson’s name, to the overseas absentee voters. But if any overseas absentee voter, or any other absentee voter, already cast the first ballot, it counts. See this story, which focuses on an argument between the Secretary of State and the Democratic Party over who should accept blame for the mistake that left Wilson’s name off the ballot.
Kind of deja vu to see Secretary Hosemann’s argument here. In 2008 when the Socialist Party candidate (Brian Moore) attempted to qualify, he shut his office door at exactly 5:00 PM even though he saw the person there trying to get in to file the paperwork. He later claimed that the statutory deadline was 5:00 PM, even though it was not (as the federal courts later concluded), and refused to change his mind no matter how much his misinterpretation was explained to him. Thus, Mr. Moore was not on the ballot. Why would an election official be in such a hurry to ignore a candidate’s filing based on an imagined deadline? And why would this same official ignore Democrats when they attempted to explain to him weeks before their mistake? Wouldn’t it make more sense to cooperate and simply add the candidates’ names to the ballots?