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26 Mar, 8 tweets, 3 min read
When Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith claimed a woman in her home town & the woman's dead father were victims of voter impersonation, she spoke as if it had happened in 2020.

I did some digging. Turns out, it happened in the 1990s.

And it's impossible to prove.
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
Back in 2010, Jennifer Jackson wrote this letter to Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (then a Democratic state senator), sharing her voter fraud allegations from the 1990s and urging her to support voter ID.

But there was no evidence left then, either. (cont.) mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
Jennifer Jackson says they let her cast an affidavit vote. She never reported the alleged voter impersonation to police. There was no investigation.

There's no way to check the voter rolls from decades ago bc Lincoln County destroys them after 22 months. mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
The Lincoln County Circuit Clerk says he's not aware of any past cases of voter impersonation there, but voters may sign on the wrong lines at times.

Or “it may be a poll worker’s error, but that’s not what the person standing there is going to think."
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
He says mix ups can also happen when people have similar names.

At least one other longtime Lincoln County resident’s maiden name is identical to Jennifer Jackson’s. But again, the voter roll is gone. (JJ says she was the only one on it, for the record).
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
To be clear, I was completely prepared to investigate and report the hell out of this story if it turned out to be a provable case of voter fraud because that would mean something really went wrong in Lincoln County election process & it'd need fixing. mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
But the alleged incident turned out to be decades old—and one with no paper trail.

I believe Jennifer Jackson when she says something went wrong that day.

But with no investigation at then & no polling books now, it's impossible to know if it was fraud or an innocent mistake.
Even if we could prove that this WAS an instance of voter fraud, it happened in the 1990s. But it's also unverified & unverifiable.

If voter impersonation is so rampant, why not offer recent, verified examples?

Answer: They don't know of any.
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…

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More from @ashtonpittman

Ashton Pittman Profile picture
28 Mar
I know a lot of people are talking about boycotting Georgia/rethinking plans to move to Atlanta.

But that's what the good ole boys want. They'd sacrifice Atlanta's prosperity & run it down like Mississippi's GOBs ran down Jackson to preserve their power.
If Jackson had been allowed to thrive like Atlanta, Mississippi would be just as much of a contested state where Black people have serious statewide political power as GA.

Instead, good ole boys ran our capital city into the ground after civil rights (hence the water crisis).
In an already 38% Black state like Mississippi, a thriving capital city that attracts a diverse young people from around the country like Atlanta does would be an imminently fatal threat to the Good Ole Boy system.

Hence why Jackson's prosperity has been sabotaged for decades.
Read 7 tweets
Ashton Pittman Profile picture
28 Mar
THREAD: When Dr. Robert Redfield, T****'s CDC director, pushes conspiracy theories about the origins of the novel coronavirus, be aware that this is the same man who has fabricated data on at least 3 occasions and stands accused of other fabrications. 1/ npr.org/sections/healt… The Fake Graph On April 9, ...
The Defense Dept investigated Dr. Redfield in 1992 on accusations he misrepresented data about an experimental HIV vaccine.

Based on the study he'd overseen, Congress gave $20 million to a private company, MicroGeneSys, to develop the ill-fated vaccine. 2/npr.org/sections/healt…
The Army in 1994 acknowledged accuracy issues with HIV vaccine clinical trials led by Redfield, but concluded at the time that the data errors did not constitute misconduct.

But others continue to accuse him of fabricating the data. 3/ npr.org/sections/healt…
Read 5 tweets
Ashton Pittman Profile picture
27 Mar
NEW: Sen. Roger Wicker says states should follow Mississippi's lead and end the practice of suspending driver's license for unpaid fines, which disproportionately impact poor Americans and people of color and make it hard to keep a job. 1/
mississippifreepress.org/10691/wicker-s…
In 2017, Mississippi became one of the first states to end the practice and began reinstating licenses for free. Other states have joined since.

But 35 states still suspend licenses for nonpayment of fine debt, causing a cascade of additional fines. 2/ mississippifreepress.org/10691/wicker-s…
A man in New Orleans, for example, was unable to pay his first traffic fine in 1989. A domino effect ensued as his license was suspended & over the course of decades, it resulted in him owing over $23,000 in fines because he still had to drive to work. 3/ mississippifreepress.org/10691/wicker-s…
Read 7 tweets
Ashton Pittman Profile picture
26 Mar
NEW: Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith says the For The People Act would "nullify Mississippi's voter ID law."

But #HR1 only requires states with voter ID laws to allow voters without IDs to vote by sworn affidavit ballot.

Mississippi already does that! 1/
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
Another change for states with voter ID laws? Under #HR1, states cannot require voters who vote by mail to include photo ID.

But Mississippi already exempts people who vote by mail from voter ID requirements! 2/
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
The For The People Act seeks to remedy an issue where states have “voter identification laws that discriminate against Native Americans” because they do not recognize tribal IDs for voting.

But Mississippi recognizes tribal IDs! 3/ mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
Read 5 tweets
Ashton Pittman Profile picture
26 Mar
NEW: While calling #HR1 a "radical" bill that would "nullify" Mississippi's voter ID law, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith told the story of a woman whom the senator said was the victim of voter impersonation—along with her dead father.

I investigated that claim. 1/
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
@SenHydeSmith: "(Jennifer Jackson) called and said, ‘Cindy, I went to vote, they told me I had already voted.' Then, she looked above who signed her name & her deceased father had already voted that day, too. So don’t tell me there is not voter fraud.” 2/
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
Sen. Hyde-Smith's office did not respond to a request for comment. BUT I did manage to track down Jennifer Jackson who told me her story, which she said happened decades ago—likely in the late 1990s.

So, I tried to verify Jennifer's claim. 3/
mississippifreepress.org/10618/sen-hyde…
Read 17 tweets
Ashton Pittman Profile picture
25 Mar
Mississippi's senator is flying to the border in Texas to address a "true crisis."

I don't recall her flying to Jackson when residents of her own state's capital city went without clean running water for a month. Some here felt like that was a crisis.
Jackson's water system still is in crisis, btw. There's some duct tape on the crisis for the moment, but it's far from fixed.

Perhaps when Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is done with the Texas performance, she might spare some time to visit her own state?mississippifreepress.org/10153/under-th…
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has offered legislation that she says would address that Jackson water issue, but the details are murky and it's not clear that it would actually fix the problem.
mississippifreepress.org/10321/specific…
Read 4 tweets

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