Election watchers reacted with alarm after Mississippi’s Hinds County, a Democratic stronghold, threw out two-thirds of the provisional ballots it reviewed in the state’s close U.S. Senate race.
The Hinds County Election Commission announced Wednesday morning that it had rejected 1,609 of the county’s 2,426 affidavit ballots, as Mississippi calls provisional ballots, and accepted 817.
Democrat Scott Colom was winning about 80% of the county’s vote in his race against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) before the affidavits were added.
Hinds rejected affidavit ballots at nearly three times the statewide rate, drawing quick online backlash. Across Mississippi, counties had accepted about 77% of the 14,239 affidavit ballots processed as of Monday, Secretary of State Michael Watson (R-MS) said.
“These reported figures are raising a few eyebrows,” Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst for Decision Desk HQ, wrote on X.
Many affidavit ballots this year appear to stem from changes in how the state maintains its voter rolls, Democracy Docket reported.
“The combination of the mass erroneous purge, forcing voters to cast affidavits, & mass rejection of affidavits per strict rules, is such an indictment of voter suppression in Mississippi,” Daniel Nichanian, founder of Bolts, a magazine covering local politics and voting rights, wrote on X.
Watson has defended the voter inactivations as a “cornerstone of election integrity.”
“Watching provisional ballot after provisional ballot get thrown out because the POLL WORKER, not the voter didn’t initial the ballot makes me sick,” Brandon Presley, the 2023 Democratic nominee for governor, wrote on X on Tuesday, a day before Hinds announced its numbers.
“If this (from the last Dem gov nominee) is accurate then my God,” Eric Columbus, a senior editor at Lawfare, wrote on Bluesky Wednesday as he shared Presley’s post.
Hinds officials pointed to two other problems: voters who cast ballots in the wrong precinct and voters who were never registered. Presley’s post did not name a county.
“That’s a large amount,” District 1 Election Commissioner Kidada Brown told Democracy Docket, “and I’m surprised because we had a lot of people that voted in the wrong precinct.”
Of 212 rejected ballots from Jackson State University students, 188 came from students who were not registered, WLBT reported.
None of those problems could be fixed after Election Day. Mississippi does not count ballots cast in the wrong precinct, and voters must register at least 30 days before an election, according to Democracy Docket. The five-day window to show ID afterward closed Tuesday and covers neither problem.
Those calls were made by the county’s five election commissioners, elected one per supervisor district to nonpartisan posts. The rejections came from local officials, chosen by voters giving Colom about 80% of the county’s vote, enforcing rules the state wrote.
The 817 accepted ballots still widened Colom’s lead. He took 703, Hyde-Smith 96 and independent Ty Pinkins eight, according to county results. That pushed his statewide lead to 3,783 votes in the Associated Press count, the Mississippi Free Press reported.
Democrats have already clinched the Senate, flipping seven seats last week to reach 54. Mississippi and Alaska are the last uncalled races. The Mississippi result will help decide how large that majority grows, and whether Republicans lose a seat in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1982.
Wins in both would give Democrats 56 seats, the biggest majority either party has held since Barack Obama was president, Slate reported. Colom would also be Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.
Hinds commissioners said the new results stay unofficial until they sign off Thursday, and state law requires counties to certify by Friday.