7 min read
Major Takeaways
- Lafayette County affidavit ballots broke for Scott Colom by 142 votes to 60, far wider than his narrow lead in the county overall.
- Colom still leads Cindy Hyde-Smith statewide by 1,813 votes, with thousands of affidavit and mail ballots still under review.
- Rankin County holds 1,667 affidavit ballots in a county Hyde-Smith leads, a reminder that the remaining ballots will not all break one way.
- Colom lawyers told counties to ignore the Republican preservation demands and to keep counting under ordinary lawful procedures.
- Voters who cast an affidavit ballot for lack of photo identification have until November 10 to cure it at the county courthouse.
Mississippi affidavit ballots have given voters their first real clue in the uncalled Senate race.
In Lafayette County, those ballots broke for Democrat Scott Colom by a margin of 69 percent to 29 percent.
That split is far wider than the contest in the county overall, where Colom leads by a single point.
Statewide, Colom leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,813 votes, with 466,775 votes to her 464,962.
The race remains too early to call, and thousands of ballots are still moving through county review.
For Black Mississippians, this count is not a math exercise in a distant capital.
Many of the ballots still under review were cast in Hinds County and other places where Black voters turned out in force.
How counties handle each envelope could decide who represents Mississippi in the Senate for the next six years.
1. Lafayette County Affidavit Ballots Point One Way
Lafayette County reported 207 affidavit ballots cast in the Senate race this week.
Colom won 142 of them, while Hyde-Smith won 60 and Ty Pinkins won five.
Across all votes in the county, Colom has 8,525 votes and Hyde-Smith has 8,325.
Hyde-Smith narrowly won the Election Day vote there, taking 6,847 votes to 6,688 for Colom.
Colom pulled ahead in the ballots cast before Election Day and by mail.
He won the in person absentee vote by 1,598 votes to 1,351, and the mail vote by 97 votes to 67.
Turnout in the county reached 52.32 percent, with 17,301 votes cast by 33,067 registered voters.
The county result also marks a swing of 23.3 points toward Democrats since the 2024 presidential race there.
One county cannot decide a statewide race, and Lafayette is home to the University of Mississippi.
Still, if affidavit ballots in other counties break anything like this, Hyde-Smith will struggle to erase the gap.
Readers following the count from the start can revisit how affidavit ballots could decide this race in our earlier coverage.
2. Rankin County Could Point the Other Way
The remaining ballots will not all favor Colom, and Rankin County shows why both campaigns are fighting county by county.
Rankin County received 1,667 affidavit ballots, according to Circuit Clerk Michelle Adcock.
County election commissioners there have not yet decided which of those ballots to accept or reject.
The county also received 282 mail absentee ballots that still need to be processed.
Up to 138 more mail ballots could still arrive there if they were postmarked by Election Day and arrive by November 10.
Rankin is strong ground for Hyde-Smith, who leads Colom there by 61.7 percent to 36.1 percent.
If Rankin affidavit and mail ballots broke at that same rate, Hyde-Smith would net about 499 votes from the county alone.
That math explains the patience both sides are preaching in public and the urgency they are showing in private.
Estimates for the statewide pile still vary, from about 15,000 affidavit ballots to as many as 20,000 ballots in total.
Secretary of State Michael Watson has said the full statewide total is still unknown.
The largest share is believed to sit in Hinds County, home to Jackson, the state capital.
3. Dueling Letters Turn a Count Into a Legal Fight
On Thursday, lawyers for Hyde-Smith told all 82 counties to separate, secure and preserve every affidavit ballot.
Republican officials presented the demand as protection for ballots that could become evidence in a later challenge.
State Republican Party Chair Mike Hurst said more than 50 volunteer attorneys and observers were already spread across the state.
Colom counsel answered on Thursday evening with a letter of their own to county officials.
That letter said the Republican demands have no basis in Mississippi law and would violate the rights of Mississippi voters.
It told officials to ignore the demands and to continue conducting the election using ordinary, lawful procedures.
Colom lawyers also warned against any step that would allow a particular ballot to be traced to a particular voter.
Colom himself said Wednesday that his team was prepared for this moment for months, with local lawyers involved across the state.
The full background on the preservation demand is in our report on the Hyde-Smith lawyers and their letter to the counties.
Mississippi has not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 40 years.
The state has not sent a Black person to the Senate since Reconstruction, a history that hangs over every rejected envelope.
4. Black Voters Have the Most at Stake in Hinds County
The NAACP is deploying members and volunteers to all 82 counties to watch how officials vet the outstanding ballots.
In counties where a voter lacked photo identification, volunteers will contact those voters and urge them to reach the courthouse before November 10.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the interest is that no individual, particularly African Americans, is disenfranchised in this process because of a lack of identification.
In Hinds County, one commissioner is sorting hundreds of affidavit ballots in proceedings open to the public.
That work includes 233 affidavit ballots cast by students at Jackson State University.
A number of those student ballots had to be rejected because the young voters were not registered in the right precinct.
One Jackson voter, Dajia Williams, age 23, described updating her license and registration in May after a move to Hinds County.
Poll workers could not find her name on Election Day, so she cast an affidavit ballot and was told to show identification again at the circuit court.
Her experience is exactly why advocates say a ballot cast at the polls cannot be the end of the process for Black voters.
Mississippi Votes, a nonpartisan civic group, is running a voter information hotline to help people through the cure process.
5. What Happens Next on November 10 and November 13
Tuesday, November 10 is the deadline that matters most for individual voters this week.
A voter who cast an affidavit ballot for lack of acceptable photo identification can present that identification at the clerk office within five business days after Election Day.
Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day can also be counted if they arrive within that same five business day window.
Counties must then process the affidavit ballots, decide each one, and certify their results by November 13.
There is no automatic recount in Mississippi, and candidates cannot simply request one under state law.
That means the county decisions happening right now are not a rehearsal for a later count.
They are the count, and each accepted or rejected ballot moves a margin of only 1,813 votes.
Our earlier update, tracking how the Colom lead grew, shows how small each shift in this race has been.
Until a call comes, the honest answer is that Mississippi is still voting on paper, one envelope at a time.
Black voters did the work of showing up, in Lafayette, in Rankin, in Hinds and in counties still to report.
The job now is making sure every lawful ballot those voters cast is counted in full view of the public.
