8 min read
Major Takeaways
- Tuesday is the deadline for mail ballots sent by Election Day to arrive and for voters who lacked photo identification to bring accepted identification to a circuit clerk.
- Scott Colom led Cindy Hyde Smith by 2,536 votes in Monday afternoon totals, with 467,961 votes to 465,425 votes and the race still too close to call.
- By Monday evening, 15,547 affidavit ballots had been processed and roughly 76 percent had been accepted, while another 2,578 absentee ballots were still outstanding.
- Voting rights advocates say state voter roll maintenance left more than 230,000 voters in inactive status and pushed lawful voters into a scramble to save their ballots.
The Mississippi Senate race enters its most urgent day yet on Tuesday.
Thousands of voters who did everything they were asked to do on Election Day now face a deadline to prove their ballots should count.
Democrat Scott Colom still leads Republican Senator Cindy Hyde Smith.
The margin remains small enough that affidavit ballots and late arriving mail ballots can still decide who represents Mississippi in the United States Senate.
For Black voters across Mississippi, this is bigger than one close count.
The voters caught in this process include people who voted at the same precinct for years, then learned on Election Day that their names were missing from the poll books.
Today Is the Last Chance for Many Voters to Save a Ballot
Tuesday, November 10 is the last day for county election offices to receive mail ballots.
A mail ballot counts only if it was sent by Election Day and arrives by this deadline.
Tuesday is also the deadline for a specific group of affidavit voters.
Anyone who cast an affidavit ballot because they did not have accepted photo identification must take that identification to the county circuit clerk office today.
Miss the deadline and the vote will not count.
Other affidavit voters do not need to take another step.
County officials review those ballots on their own, and voters can track a ballot status through the Secretary of State office once the county enters it into the state system.
Election officials urge anyone with a question to call the county circuit clerk office directly. The state voter identification help line is 1 800 829 6786.
A Lead of 2,536 Votes With Thousands of Ballots Still in Play
Secretary of State Michael Watson shared new numbers Monday afternoon from the statewide election system.
Unofficial results at 5 p.m. showed Colom with 467,961 votes and Hyde Smith with 465,425 votes, a lead of 2,536 votes for Colom.
Watson said 75 of the 82 counties had uploaded unofficial results by Monday.
Seven counties had still not sent in their numbers, and the results stay unofficial until every county certifies its count.
By Monday evening the review had moved further.
Watson said 15,547 affidavit ballots had been processed, with roughly 76 percent of them accepted, and another 2,578 absentee ballots were still outstanding.
That math explains why nobody has called this race.
The pool of ballots still being reviewed is larger than the lead itself, a reality Urban City Podcast readers saw coming as Colom flipped 18 counties across a state many expected to stay safely Republican.
How Credit Data Helped Push Voters Off the Poll Books
The fight over these ballots starts with how Mississippi maintains its voter rolls.
Last year the state began using commercially available credit data to help identify voters who may have moved, as part of voter list maintenance.
Critics warned the data could misread people in a state where many residents do not use banks.
Marvin King teaches political science and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi.
He questioned the accuracy of the data, noting that more than 9 percent of state residents do not use a bank and sit outside the credit system.
State maintenance activity left more than 230,000 voters statewide in inactive status ahead of Election Day. That is about 1 in 9 registered voters.
Inactive voters were not removed from the rolls, but their names were left out of the poll books workers use at each precinct.
Election administration expert Michael Morse of the University of Pennsylvania law school noted that many states let an inactive voter who shows up at the correct precinct cast a regular ballot.
Mississippi instead required those voters to cast affidavit ballots and wait for a county review.
The credit reporting company Experian, which reached a deal with the state last year, said it has not provided services to Mississippi since early 2025.
The company said the solution it provided was supplemental address information and was not designed or intended to validate voter records.
Watson defended the process in a statement.
He said state officials have used every available resource to keep elections secure, and he called the affidavit ballot process a safety net for errors election commissioners make during voter roll maintenance.
Voting rights advocates see a different picture.
Waikinya Clanton, the Mississippi state director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, argued that a person who has registered to vote should not be rendered inactive and should not face a purge of their status for choosing when to engage.
Voters in Jackson Refused to Walk Away
The human cost of the process played out all day Monday at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson. Voters crowded the building demanding answers about whether their ballots would count.
Andrew Couch had voted at the same polling location in the last two elections.
On Election Day he was told he was registered in a different county, one he had not lived in for six years.
He cast an affidavit ballot that night, then spent days trying to fix the problem. On Monday he was told his vote will not count.
Couch said he has participated in the process for many years and has taught his kids to participate as well.
He warned that people lose faith in the process when a lawful vote gets thrown into doubt, and that lost faith can hurt turnout in the future.
TaChana Hurst, a Colom supporter who lives in Hinds County, voted for the last seven years without a problem.
This year she was blocked from casting an absentee ballot, then sent back and forth between two precincts for hours before she was told to fill out an affidavit ballot.
That ballot was accepted a few days later.
Hurst said she refused to give up because walking away would have meant surrendering her right to vote.
Her experience, she said, was unlike anything she had faced in seven years of voting.
Rebecca Cavett arrived at the courthouse Monday clutching her driver license while she waited to learn her fate.
She learned she had voted by absentee ballot and still needed to provide more identification in person. Her ballot was accepted.
Cavett lost her daughter to gun violence. Her brother died of prostate cancer after facing mounting medical bills.
She said those losses are why she fought for her vote for Colom, and she worried that a process this complicated will cause voter fatigue among people who cannot spend days chasing a ballot.
Her message to anyone ready to quit was simple. She knows her vote is her voice, the obstacle course was worth it, and your vote does count.
What Happens Next in the Mississippi Senate Race
County election officials have until Friday, November 13 to vet and count all affidavit ballots and certify county level results to the Secretary of State office.
The state certification deadline is December 3.
Both campaigns are watching every step.
The Colom campaign has placed observers in every county to watch the ballot review, building on the pattern Urban City Podcast documented when affidavit ballots broke big for Scott Colom in the first days of review.
The Hyde Smith campaign says its team is watching the remaining ballots across the state.
Lawyers for her campaign have asked counties to keep all affidavit ballots separate and secure while the review continues.
Mississippi law provides no automatic recount.
A candidate who disputes the certified result would have to ask a court to step in, which is why the preserved envelopes and custody records for each affidavit ballot matter so much right now.
Until a call comes, the instruction for Mississippi voters is urgent and simple.
If you cast an affidavit ballot for lack of photo identification, get to your circuit clerk office today. If you mailed a ballot, track it.
Every ballot saved today is a voice that survives Friday certification.
Stay with Urban City Podcast for continuing coverage of the count, the certification fight, and what this race means for Black political power in Mississippi and across the South.
