Supreme Court Denies McDaniel Appeal

Click here to read court’s ruling.

The state Supreme Court late today denied Republican Chris McDaniels appeal of a ruling that threw out his challenge to the results of the June 24 Republican Primary.

In a 30-page opinion, the Supreme Court upheld a 1959 ruling that set a 20-day deadline for election appeals. The court said that rulinjg still stands and dropped McDaniel’s case.

McDaniel filed his challenge on Aug. 4, 41 days after the election, and Special Judge Hollis McGehee who was appointed to hear the case in Jones County Chancery Court said that was too late. McDaniel appealed, resulting in today’s ruling.

In late August, Chancery Judge Hollis McGehee, who was appointed by Chief Justice William Waller Jr. to hear the McDaniel challenge, ruled that he waited too long to file it.

McDaniel appealed that decision to the Supreme Court where six of the nine justices heard oral arguments on the issue.

McGehee agreed with the Cochran campaign that the 1959 state Supreme Court ruling – Kellum vs. Johnson – outlining the 20-day deadline made McDaniel’s challenge not timely.

McDaniel argued that the 20-day deadline was no longer the law. To bolster that argument the McDaniel campaign pointed out that in 2003 current House Speaker Philip Gunn of Clinton took 34 days to file his challenge after initial returns showed him losing an election for a four-county state House seat.

McDaniel was defeated by Cochran in the June 24 runoff by 7,667 votes out of the 392,197 cast statewide.

McDaniel claims that his campaign has found about 15,000 questionable ballots statewide. The Cochran campaign argues that any irregularities that occurred during the June 24 election were minor, the result of human error and did not impact the outcome.