Magnolia State Official Predicts Record Voter Turnout
by Chad Groening and Jenni Parker
November 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - Mississippi's Secretary of State Eric Clark predicts a record voter turnout in the state as citizens head for the polls on Election Day. Meanwhile, the Magnolia State's governor is warning voters that fraud is an enormous problem across the United States, and their state is not immune in a country that has seen several examples of questionable election results in recent years.Secretary of State Clark says the current record for voter turnout in Mississippi is 994,184 in the 2000 presidential election, in which 48 percent of the state's voting-age adults exercised their right to cast their ballot. He also notes that 894,487 people -- a sizeable portion of Mississippi's more than 2 million eligible adults -- voted in last year's gubernatorial election.
Today, however, Clark predicts the turnout at the polls will break the previous state record. "There is intense interest in the presidential race," he says. "I expect 1,080,000 Mississippians to vote tomorrow -- the first time more than one million Mississippians have gone to the polls in our history."
In addition to voting for the U.S. president in the November 2 election, Mississippi's voters are casting ballots for all four U.S. House of Representatives seats, four State Supreme Court posts, and in some places, certain county and municipal officers. Also on the Mississippi ballot is a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the state. And some counties will be holding special elections to fill vacancies or to conduct their own public referendums.
But as Election Day marks the culmination of a hotly debated presidential campaign, Governor Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, says he has seen the reports of voter fraud in many of the battleground states, such as Ohio. Mississippi's chief executive believes it is important for citizens of his state, along with the rest of America, to be aware of what happens when voter fraud goes unchecked.
"Every time there's an illegal ballot cast," Barbour says, "it cancels out some legal voter's vote. And that's just as important [as allowing people to exercise their right to vote] -- to not let legal votes get cancelled out by illegal votes."
The Mississippi Republican recalls at least two elections in the last four years in which he feels it was extremely questionable whether the legal winner actually won. He says one was the recent Senate race in South Dakota, and another was "the presidential race in New Mexico in 2000, where I think there was a general consensus that Bush got more legal votes in New Mexico but that there were some illegal votes that were counted."
Barbour contends that the illegal votes that were counted in New Mexico cost President Bush that state, and he says vigilance is required to make sure nothing like that happens in the 2004 election. "Voter fraud is not uncommon in America," he says. "It is a very serious issue."
Governor Barbour adds that all Americans need to be concerned about the possibility of such fraud in the November 2 election. He says great diligence needs to be employed to ensure ballot integrity during this 2004 election, not only in Mississippi but all across the U.S.
