Jackson Free Press

The Jackson city clerk's office provided 15 names of potential mayoral candidates who have filed paperwork to run in the special election. The deadline was today at 5 p.m. The election commissioners are still qualifying the list, however, so it could shrink. They are:

Kenneth A. Swarts, Sedgwick Drive

Albert Wilson, North State Street

Francis P. Smith, Jr., Pear Orchard Road

Melvin V. Priester Jr., Westwind Road

Gwendolyn Ward Osborne Chapman, Morgan Avenue

Tony T. Yarber, Dorgan Street

Harvey Johnson Jr., Hallmark Drive

Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Pear Orchard Park

John Horhn, Waverly Drive

Margaret Barrett-Simon, Hazel Street

Rodrick "Rod" Walker, Hallmark Drive

John E. Reed, Post Oak Road

Tonya Brooks, Valley North Boulevard

Regina Quinn, Autumn Hill Drive

Tammie Patterson, Carleton Street

We will update you when the candidates have all qualified.

From the you can't make this ish up file, the Mississippi American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint this afternoon alleging the Mississippi Highway Patrol engaged in racial profiling and violated the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of Raymond Montgomery and Cathryn Stout, who are African American.

The stop happened Aug. 8 just north of Jackson on I-55 South, the ACLU said. A doctoral student at Saint Louis University, Stout "was traveling to Jackson to conduct interviews for a paper on Mississippians’ efforts to combat negative stereotypes of their state," the ACLU said.

According to the ACLU's press release, troopers pulled the couple over for Stout's Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. — a historically African American sorority — license plate holder. The release goes on to say:

"When (the couple) exercised their constitutional right to refuse to consent to a search, the trooper called his supervisor, Staff Sergeant Brad Vincent. The plaintiffs watched helplessly as troopers riffled through their suitcase and invaded their privacy. The troopers even dismantled the panels of their interior doors and looked under the hood of their car. In an effort to document the troopers’ actions, Stout tried to record the events on her phone camera. She was told to stop, and fearing arrest, she did. Their hour-long humiliation finally ended when the troopers could not find any contraband. They were sent on their way without any ticket, or an apology."

Stout noted the irony that the whole purpose of her trip was to show how far Mississippi has come in combating the image that the state is racially hostile.

"Unfortunately, my experience with the Highway Patrol revealed a much different picture,” Stout said.

Interestingly, at an Aug. 2012 legislative hearing on immigration reform, Vincent testified that Mexico-based cartels frequently transport narcotics through Mississippi and that the telltale signs of foreign drug mules, include old vehicles with new registrations filled with personal belongings. So it's possible that MHP thought Stout and Raymond (pictured below) were drug runners from south of the border.

The lawsuit, in which Department of Public Safety Commissioner Albert Santa Cruz is named as the main defendant, was filed in federal court in Jackson.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2013/dec/13/14981/

True the Vote, the Houston—Texas-based pollwatching organization that is suing Mississippi political and government officials over alleged voter suppression—has submitted two affidavits from people to support their claims that the integrity of the June 24 Republican primary for U.S. Senate might have been compromised.

One submitted to TTV by a woman named Susan Morse in Noxubee County claims that a Macon woman participated in the GOP primary after voting in the Democratic primary June 3, which state election laws prohibit.

Another, filed in Harrison County by a man named Phillip C. Harding III, claims that at about 2 p.m. on July 1—one week after the election that U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran beat state Sen. Chris McDaniel, he observed election officials discard ballots.

Harding writes: "In a one of the bins I found a small stack of provisional ballots, unopened. I gave te provisional ballots to an exec committee member who took control of them. I also found absentee ballot bags in several o the supply bins. Some had opened envelopes and applications in the them. I took the applications and envelopes out because I did not know what to do with them, but believed they should be saved. After setting them aside I saw another volunteer dispose of them at executive committee members' direction."

The group filed a motion for a temporary restraining order in U.S. District Court in Jackson late Wednesday against election commissioners in several Mississippi counties, including Hinds County, as well as the state GOP. A teleconference took place this morning at the federal courthouse.

The motion for the TRO detailed the counties it says is not complying with the law: While some counties provided proper voter records, Copiah County, Hinds County, Jefferson Davis County, Lauderdale County, Leake County, Madison County, Rankin County, Simpson County, and Yazoo County refused. These counties, who have been sued via their respective Election Commissions, also wrongfully maintain that the birthdates of voters must be redacted from voter records, at Plaintiffs’ expense."