What Do You Do When Your Senate Candidate Flounders?

Mississippi’s

Republican Governor and Secretary State are

turning the November ballot upside down in Magnolia state. They are putting a
race for the United State’s
Senate, the most high-profile race in the state, at the end of the ballot. The
other Senate race remains at the top of ballot, right after the Presidential
candidates, where the law says federal races should go.

Governor Haley
Barbour and Secretary of State Delbert Hoseman have a problem. Roger Wicker,
their Republican nominee for Trent Lott’s vacated Senate seat is struggling
against the hard working and popular Democrat, former Governor Ronnie Musgrove.

Their answer to
the problem: be creative, ignore the law and manipulate the ballot. I guess you
could say that they are going old school on the voters.

It’s even
happening in the dark of night. One local election official filed a suit to
stop this travesty and a local court agreed. But Governor Barbour called on his
friends at Mississippi’s
Republican leaning Supreme Court to intervene. They did, after work hours. They
overturned the lower court’s ruling and green lighted the manipulated ballots.
The Secretary of State then sent out the manipulated ballots… in the middle
of the night.

Yes, hide the
senate race at the end of the ballot where some may not find it and do it
during the dark of night. Many voters such as the elderly, less educated and
first-time voters have trouble with long and complicated ballots and these
voters are likely Democrats.

So, what is the
backroom motivation of these Republican politicians? Rocket scientists not
needed to figure this one out.

I’m a
Mississippian by birth and the grace of God. I love my state and such tactics
anger me. I grew up in the home of a county
Sheriff
and every four years we walked door to door and campaigned for re-election. My
earliest memories are sitting in church pews listening to pastors remember the
recent past where manipulations took place to disenfranchise voters and ensure
the status quo followed by the encouragement to go register, vote and “let
your voice be heard” because it’s a new day, a better day.

The Governor and
Secretary of State can argue all they want that because the Senate race is a
“special election” it should go at the end of the ballot. Hogwash.
Hokum. Honey, where’s the shovel? No law and no precedent would place it
there… self-serving, old school, backroom, win at all costs politics is
putting it at the end.

And the voters
lose.

We can do
better. Common ground is found on higher ground. This is taking place in 2008
and the losers are the voters, white and black, old and young, poor and rich.
We all lose because political calculation, win at all costs by an elite
establishment, blackens the eyes of justice and inclusiveness falls by the
turn-rows. Mississippians deserve better.

See
related articles: Secretary of State distributes
disputed Miss. ballot– Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press/Sun Herald and Mississippi’s
Ballot Trick– New York Times

This piece was originally posted on Beliefnet at http://blog.beliefnet.com/progressiverevival/