Mississippi Democrat alleges election fraud, demands county party chair resign

A Democratic district supervisor of a Mississippi county has alleged that fraud occurred in his election and demanded that the county party chair resign, amid Republicans being widely called “election deniers” since the 2020 presidential election for questioning irregularities. 

Hinds County District 2 Supervisor David Archie (D) last week called for county Democratic Executive Committee Chair Jacqueline Amos to resign after alleging her involvement in fraud in the party primary election on Aug. 8. 

Archie, who was running for reelection, said during a press conference: “There’s a lot of fraud going on in Hinds County politics. But this time, it couldn’t have happened to a better candidate – a sitting Hinds County supervisor.” 

Hinds County includes the capital city of Jackson. 

Archie’s opponent, Anthony Smith, won the primary election for Hinds County District 2 supervisor by nearly 1,900 votes. 

“We have videotape of Jacquie Amos going into boxes, bringing in thumb drives, bringing in ballots to be inserted into machines,” Archie said. “We have pictures of Jacquie Amos participating in what we think is fraud, as well as corruption.” 

Amos didn’t respond to a request for comment. She previously wrote in a statement to local NBC affiliate WLBT that the “Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee conducted the August 8 Democratic Primary in keeping with applicable state law. The executive committee has canvassed the returns and certified the results of the August 8 primary. Those results speak for themselves.” 

Amos also released a statement, saying, “We understand that one candidate who lost, namely David Archie, has decided to challenge the results of the August 8 primary. He has the right to challenge the results and will cooperate however necessary.” 

Cynthia Johnson-Walker, who led a six-day ballot review of the primary election, explained what her team found in the review. 

There are 26 precincts in District 2, and the voting machines used in the precincts verify votes with paper ballots, machine tapes that count every voter who used the machines, and thumb drives, Johnson-Walker said. While all the precincts provided the paper ballots for the review, none of them provided the machine tapes or thumb drives, she added. 

Johnson-Walker also explained that 20 of the 26 precincts didn’t provide her team with the voter signature book for when voters sign in to the precinct to cast their ballot. She mentioned that 20 of the 26 precincts didn’t provide ballot accounting forms, which are how precincts track the number of ballots they have, how many are used, how many ballot affidavits there were, and the number of spoiled ballots. 

Absentee ballots and ballot affidavits were also not provided to the ballot review team by the precincts, Johnson-Walker said, and materials belonging to Districts 1, 3, and 5 were included in the boxes that were only supposed to contain District 2 records. She noted that none of the boxes received from the precincts were sealed properly. 

Democrats have not been frequently called "election deniers" for questioning elections despite a long history of challenging results .

But since former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have raised concerns about election irregularities in the 2020 presidential election, they have been labeled “election deniers” by Democrats and the media. 

President Joe Biden last year denounced "extreme MAGA Republicans" and derided the "election deniers" who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. 

"Democracy is under attack because the defeated former president refused to accept the results of the 2020 election," Biden said in a speech last November, before referring to the "big lie," a common left-wing term for Trump's election fraud claims. Biden further termed such claims to be an "article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party." 

Meanwhile, news outlets such as The Washington Post frequently published articles leading up to the midterm elections last year with headlines such as "Where Republican election deniers are on the ballot near you," as well as "trackers" monitoring the performance of what they calculated were the nearly 300 GOP candidates who fit their definition of election denier. 

The New York Times similarly tracked the status of so-called deniers and tallied "more than" 220 "election deniers and skeptics," all Republicans, who won their races. 

Other media outlets — including Time, Reuters, the Associated Press, and NBC News — employed the term election denier routinely in their reporting, attributing the term specifically to Republicans who questioned, challenged, contested, or denied the 2020 election outcome. 

However, “election denier” does not appear to be widely used against Democrats, despite dozens of them claiming election fraud and irregularities since at least the 2000 presidential election.