Derek Willis over at The Upshot via The New York Times, has drawn attention to something that has privately annoyed me for a few days now.
Mississippi primary election was six days ago. No results posted on Secretary of State site yet: http://t.co/AInlekUJRG
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) June 10, 2014
To give you an idea of how stupid this is, Rankin Co. has HTML of results. The state can't tap into this? https://t.co/1rcWqGxpLQ
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) June 10, 2014
I mean, the Miss. SoS knows the results of the primary, yes? But it can't post even PDFs of unofficial results? Boggles the mind.
— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) June 10, 2014
Much ado has been made regarding protecting the integrity of elections under Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. Hosemann even suggested in an Election Day press release that they had not heard any problems relating to Voter ID, despite the fact that I personally called to report 2 (two) of my own.But the issue here is that we are six days removed from an election and Hosemann's office has absolutely dropped the ball in reporting its data. Not only does this cause trouble for nerds like myself interested in checking out precincts in depth, it means that nobody really knows how close the election was, including the media.
In fact, without official announcement or certification from Delbert Hosemann's office, how do we even know that a runoff was necessary?
This is a wee bit troubling as Hosemann publicly endorsed Cochran after flirting with the idea of running himself.
Why are we waiting? I've done enough data parsing to know that the Secretary's office doesn't even digitize the returns. They merely scan them and publish.
Something's got to give. You know, for integrity's sake.
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UPDATE: Derek Willis from The Upshot as well as comments below have an update regarding this issue.
“We don’t even certify the results,” said Pam Weaver, communications director for the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office. “But as soon as the parties send the results to us, we post them.” A similar process is in place in Alabama. Under state law, the parties have until June 13 to send the results to state officials.