Election Problems Caused by Voting Rules

During class, we discussed the 1991 Gubernatorial election in Louisiana involving Buddy Roemer, David Duke, and Edwin Edwards, and how the winner of the election could be manipulated depending on the voting rules and elimination methods that are applied. This past summer, there was another election in the Deep South that caused and is still causing considerable controversy. Almost 4 months after the ballots were counted, the U.S. Senate Republican Primary in Mississippi, dubbed "The Nastiest Election in America", remains unresolved.

At the beginning of June, Mississippi state senator Chris McDaniel was viewed as a rising star in the Republican Party and was favored by many to unseat six-time incumbent Senator Thad Cochran. Both candidates consider themselves staunch conservatives, but McDaniel received the endorsement from many in the Tea Party movement, while Cochran was favored by the Republican establishment. The Republican Primary election was held on June 3, and while McDaniel won a plurality of the votes, no candidate won a majority so McDaniel and Cochran were forced into a runoff. McDaniel was expected to win the runoff, but Cochran managed to eek out a narrow victory by 1.6 percentage points.

The election rules in Mississippi are rather interesting-Mississippi has an open primary system which technically allows Democrats to vote in the Republican Primary (and vice versa) as voters do not have to register by party, but voters are only allowed to vote in one party's primary, and by law are also supposed to vote for the same candidate in the general election. This law is, of course, very difficult to enforce. McDaniel's complaint is essentially that between the Primary on June 3 and the runoff, Cochran and his supporters spent a lot of effort trying to convince Democratic voters, who had no intention of voting Republican in the general election, as well as people who had already voted in the Democratic primary, to vote for him.

This is obviously incredibly difficult to prove, and McDaniel has had a hard time just getting the Mississippi Supreme Court to hear his case (the court is currently evaluating Cochran's counterclaim that McDaniel's appeal was filed too late and therefore should be tossed out). While the election rules as they stand may seem illogical, as crossover voting is illegal but almost undetectable, they may have ensured that the Condorcet winner ends up winning the senate seat. It's almost certain that most Mississippians would prefer Cochran to any Democrat, as we will likely see in the general election next month. At the same time, when non-Republican voters are taken into account, it would appear that the more mainstream Cochran is again the preferred candidate when paired against a Tea Party favorite like McDaniel. If democratic-leaning voters could be identified, or if Mississippi had a closed Primary system where only registered Republicans could vote in the primary, the outcome could have been different.

According to several polls leading up to the runoff, McDaniel was leading Cochran among Republican voters, with some polls putting his lead at up to 8 percent. If the primary election had been limited to Republicans, then there is a good chance that McDaniel would have won. And as his party's nominee, he too would likely have won the general election with ease, even though most Mississippians probably prefer Cochran over him. Therefore, it appears that McDaniel may have been the Condorcet winner among Mississippi Republicans, while Cochran was the overall Condorcet winner. So ironically, due to the possible illegal voting that may have occurred thanks to Mississippi's questionable voting laws, the most preferred candidate in the election will in all likelihood end up retaining his seat.