Mississippi Senate Race Hangs on Thousands of Affidavit Ballots

Mississippi has significantly more voters who cast affidavit ballots than the number of votes separating the two Senate candidates in the closely contested U.S. Senate race.

As of Monday afternoon, Democrat Scott Colom held a 2,574-vote lead over Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the deep-red state, The Associated Press reported. However, according to Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, more than 14,000 affidavit ballots had been processed, and more than 2,700 absentee ballots were still out.

Affidavit ballots are cast by voters whose eligibility or qualifications cannot be fully resolved at the polling place, including voters who lack photo ID. Officials can reject the ballots if voters do not provide an acceptable form of identification in five days, or for other reasons including the wrong signature or registration in the wrong county, Mississippi Public Broadcasting reported.

The state counts ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day if the ballots are postmarked by Election Day.

“Here are the latest numbers from the Statewide Election Management System: We still sit at 75 of 82 counties with unofficial results uploaded,” Watson posted on X Monday.

“There are 2,732 absentee mail in ballots still out. Deadline for county election officials to receive is tomorrow, November 10. 14,239 affidavit ballots have now been processed with roughly 77% of them being accepted. All 82 counties must submit certified results to our office by this Friday, November 13,” Watson, a Republican, added.

On Thursday, lawyers for the Hyde-Smith campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee wrote to 82 county election officials, demanding that affidavit ballots be separated from the rest of the ballot count and preserved.

Last week, Hyde-Smith, on her X campaign account, vowed to continue the fight.

“We are not backing down,” the X account of the Hyde-Smith campaign posted Friday. “This election is not over. Our team is working across Mississippi to monitor the remaining ballots and protect the integrity of the process. We will see this through to the very end!”

In a post on X, Colom complained that political pundits who dismissed him and other Southern Democrats ahead of the election made the road much tougher.

“At some point, we have to talk about @CookPolitical and other ‘prognosticators’ who had me and other southern candidates labeled as solid R for much of the campaign cycle,” he quipped. “They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long.”

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