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In the wake of the June 24 primary runoff election in Mississippi, state Sen. Chris McDaniel's staff found the numbers in Lafayette County – home of the cabin which incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran has sometimes listed as his primary address – just didn't add up.
“We decided to check the machine tapes that were printed out of every machine at 7 p.m. when the polls closed,” said Stephen Furney, a McDaniel campaign volunteer who helped in the election review process and signed an affidavit documenting what he saw in Lafayette County.
“The Lafayette County circuit clerk gave us a total for the numbers to show the total number of votes cast. So with the help of the Cochran campaign, we reviewed the box containing those machine tape receipts and began to unravel them by machine number and precinct and go from there,” Furney said.
The machine tape receipts Furney described are a fairly standard process throughout elections in Mississippi. Voters vote on a machine, and when poll workers wrap up for the end of the night, the machines at each precinct print a receipt with the total tally of votes for each candidate.
“After we got through with all of that, we added up the total number of votes that was verified by the machine at every precinct—and the total number of votes that were cast, and what the county reported, was in some instances not reconcilable,” Furney said in a phone interview. “I was there to just report facts. And the facts were [that] according to the machines, there were 1,038 votes less than what the county reported.”
That 1,038 differential may be somewhat accounted for via absentee and affidavit ballots, the total of which, according to McDaniel’s campaign, was 569.
“The sum of all the voting machine votes is 4829, and the total of all absentee/affidavit ballots that appear to have been accepted by the county election officials is 569,” Furney wrote in his affidavit that is included as part of the McDaniel campaign’s legal challenge. “Thus the sum of all these two is 5398. However, the total number of votes reported on the Official Final Results report is 5863, a number that is 469 greater than the sum of the voting machines and the absentee/affidavits paper votes.”
“We decided to check the machine tapes that were printed out of every machine at 7 p.m. when the polls closed,” said Stephen Furney, a McDaniel campaign volunteer who helped in the election review process and signed an affidavit documenting what he saw in Lafayette County.
“The Lafayette County circuit clerk gave us a total for the numbers to show the total number of votes cast. So with the help of the Cochran campaign, we reviewed the box containing those machine tape receipts and began to unravel them by machine number and precinct and go from there,” Furney said.
The machine tape receipts Furney described are a fairly standard process throughout elections in Mississippi. Voters vote on a machine, and when poll workers wrap up for the end of the night, the machines at each precinct print a receipt with the total tally of votes for each candidate.
“After we got through with all of that, we added up the total number of votes that was verified by the machine at every precinct—and the total number of votes that were cast, and what the county reported, was in some instances not reconcilable,” Furney said in a phone interview. “I was there to just report facts. And the facts were [that] according to the machines, there were 1,038 votes less than what the county reported.”
That 1,038 differential may be somewhat accounted for via absentee and affidavit ballots, the total of which, according to McDaniel’s campaign, was 569.
“The sum of all the voting machine votes is 4829, and the total of all absentee/affidavit ballots that appear to have been accepted by the county election officials is 569,” Furney wrote in his affidavit that is included as part of the McDaniel campaign’s legal challenge. “Thus the sum of all these two is 5398. However, the total number of votes reported on the Official Final Results report is 5863, a number that is 469 greater than the sum of the voting machines and the absentee/affidavits paper votes.”
