6 min read
Major Takeaways
- Affidavit ballots could decide the Mississippi Senate race, where Scott Colom leads by 1,138 votes.
- Thousands of voters learned at the polls that the state had moved them to inactive status.
- Faulty commercial data used to clean the rolls sits at the center of the dispute.
- Voters who lacked photo identification have until November 10 to protect their ballots.
The Mississippi Senate race may be decided by affidavit ballots.
Those are the ballots voters cast when something goes wrong at check in.
A name is missing from the poll book.
A registration shows as inactive.
An accepted photo identification is not on hand.
Thousands of Mississippi voters met that moment on Tuesday.
Now their ballots sit in review while a Senate seat hangs in the balance.
Affidavit Ballots Move to the Center of the Mississippi Senate Race
The count itself has barely moved since Wednesday evening.
Colom holds 464,926 votes, or 49.0 percent.
Hyde Smith holds 463,788 votes, or 48.9 percent.
Independent Ty Pinkins holds 19,934 votes, or 2.1 percent.
Precincts have reported in 1,733 of 1,736 locations.
About 96 percent of the expected vote has been counted.
Our Thursday morning report on the 1,138 vote lead laid out those numbers.
The open question is no longer the counted vote.
The open question is the uncounted vote.
The Colom campaign puts the affidavit ballots still pending at roughly 15,000.
State officials have not confirmed a total number.
Even a fraction of that pool dwarfs a 1,138 vote margin.
How So Many Voters Landed on the Inactive List
This cycle, the state used commercial credit data for the first time.
The Secretary of State office contracted with Experian to help clean the voter rolls.
The data was sent to counties, and election commissioners updated their lists from it.
Thousands of eligible voters were moved to inactive status in the months before Election Day.
An analysis of state data shows the scale in the largest counties.
More than 15,000 people in DeSoto County were removed as active voters.
That shift happened between the primary and the general election.
Jackson County shows 14,063 inactive voters.
Harrison County on the Gulf Coast shows 28,921.
Many of those voters discovered the change only when they reached the polls.
One Harrison County voter said the discovery blew him away.
People in line beside him had voted at the same place for decades.
One man said he had been voting there for 30 years.
The voter waited an hour and 15 minutes with dozens of others.
He cast an affidavit ballot and later found it still marked unprocessed.
For voters across Mississippi, a routine check in became a test of patience.
State Officials Defend the Purge of the Rolls
Secretary of State Michael Watson acknowledged the confusion on Election Day.
He defended the inactivations as a cornerstone of election integrity.
Watson said his office sends data to the counties for verification.
He said affidavit voting exists to catch errors like these.
He called the extra few minutes for those voters well worth it.
Elections experts strongly disagree with that framing.
Thessalia Merivaki researches elections at Washington State University.
She said some of the data are simply not reliable.
Eligible voters were wrongly made inactive, she said.
The mail alert meant to warn them went to the wrong address.
The faulty data caused both the error and the missed warning.
“It is such a close election where literally every vote counts,” Merivaki said.
“These affidavits are gonna really make or break who wins this election.”
Why Black Mississippi Voters Feel This Fight Most
Mississippi has the largest Black electorate share of any state, at about 35 percent.
Black voters made up about 30 percent of voters in this race.
Exit polling shows nearly all of them backed Colom.
The NAACP opened 11 voter registration sites across the state this year.
Those sites registered more than 17,000 voters.
“Mississippians showed up and shocked the nation,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said Wednesday.
That turnout now runs through a paperwork review.
Every affidavit ballot represents a person who showed up to vote.
Many did everything right for years at the same polling place.
Their reward was a longer line and a ballot in limbo.
Black Mississippians know this pattern from a long and hard history.
Generations fought poll taxes, tests and purges for the right to be counted.
A database error should never carry that same power.
If Colom holds on, he becomes the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
He would also be the first Democrat to win this seat since 1982.
Our earlier coverage of the 43 vote deadlock traced how close this race has run.
Both Campaigns Prepare for a Legal Showdown
Neither campaign is standing down while counties review ballots.
Colom sounded confident at his Wednesday news conference in Jackson.
“Once the process plays out, we are gonna win,” Colom said.
He credited historic turnout across Mississippi for his position.
The Hyde Smith campaign says it is closely monitoring the outstanding ballots.
Manager Jake Monssen said the team remains confident of victory.
He said a full and accurate count will show Hyde Smith reelected.
Several counties have already begun reviewing affidavit ballots.
Advocates expect early answers may not arrive until next week.
Each ballot decision can be challenged in court by either side.
That is where a long count can turn into a longer fight.
What Happens Next and What Voters Should Do
Some affidavit voters need to take one more step.
A voter who lacked photo identification must show it to the circuit clerk.
That deadline is November 10, five business days after Election Day.
Advocates say voters made inactive by bad data should need no extra steps.
Their eligibility should be verified from the record itself.
Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day also remain in play.
About 3,600 of those ballots were still outstanding this week.
They count if they arrive within the same five business day window.
Counties must certify their results by November 13.
The state then declares the final results on December 3.
Mississippi has no recount law, automatic or requested.
A court order or the United States Senate itself would have to step in.
Follow the count as it develops on our election tracker.
For now, the voters in the affidavit pile hold the future of this seat.
Their ballots were cast in good faith on Tuesday.
Mississippi owes them a count that honors that faith.
