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By Alia Shoaib and Jennifer Radcliffe
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The ongoing vote count in Mississippi's closely contested U.S. Senate race is under scrutiny following claims that large numbers of provisional ballots are being rejected due to poll worker errors.
Brandon Presley, Mississippi's 2023 Democratic nominee for governor and a former public service commissioner, said on X: “Watching provisional ballot after provisional ballot get thrown out because the POLL WORKER, not the voter didn’t initial the ballot makes me sick.”
The claim comes as election officials continue to process thousands of affidavit ballots, which could prove decisive in the tight race between Democrat Scott Colom and Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.
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Colom led Hyde-Smith by 3,037 votes as of Wednesday, with 98 percent of votes counted, according to the Associated Press, but the race has yet to be called.
Newsweek contacted Presley, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson and the Colom and Hyde-Smith campaigns via email on Wednesday for comment.
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Poll Worker Errors
The count in Mississippi has been complicated by thousands of affidavit ballots, which are cast by voters whose eligibility cannot immediately be verified and must be reviewed by election officials before they can be counted. Counties must certify their results by Friday, November 13.
The ballot must be initialed by a poll worker, and the affidavit envelope must be signed by the voter and a poll worker.
Presley said on X that he was referring to cases in which a poll worker failed to initial the ballot but signed the accompanying affidavit envelope. He argued that this showed the ballot had been legitimately issued, and that voters were being penalized for an error made by election staff.
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Reporting from The Atlantic has also suggested that some ballots have not been counted due to mistakes made by officials. The outlet said representatives from several groups reported that ballots were being rejected “because poll workers—not voters—failed to adhere to strict procedures that required them to sign affidavits.”
The Atlantic also reported an account from De’Angelo Houston, the president of the Meridian Lauderdale County NAACP branch, who said he witnessed an election official reject 21 affidavit ballots for missing signatures, either from the voter or a poll worker. Newsweek reached out to Houston for more information.
Watson said on Monday that 15,547 affidavit ballots had been processed, with roughly 76 percent accepted. He said another 2,578 absentee ballots were still outstanding.
Advocates and Attorneys on the Ground
A Mississippi voting rights advocate monitoring ballot-counting efforts in Harrison County said election officials accepted 746 affidavit ballots and rejected 704 on Wednesday, a roughly 50 percent rejection rate that has raised concerns among groups observing the process following last week's election.
Sonya Williams-Barnes, state policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Newsweek that the affidavit ballots in Harrison County will be put in machines to be counted Thursday morning. Advocates and attorneys are dispatched across the state to ensure every ballot is handled properly and every vote is counted, she said.
"It's great for the community as well as for our elected officials to actually see how this all plays out, and to understand the importance of every voter, every ballot," Williams-Barnes said. "Every vote is important. That's the America that we live in, and that's definitely the Mississippi that we live in because this is the process that we're having to maneuver through."
Despite growing attention on the state's ballot-counting process, Williams-Barnes declined to speculate on whether legal challenges might emerge. Instead, she said advocates hope lawmakers and election officials use lessons from this election to examine potential changes.
Affidavit ballots are being rejected due to voter and worker errors, she said.
"The polling manager has to sign the back of the envelope of the sealed ballot, and so does the voter," she said. "It's in law, and so that's something that we'll have to take up through legislation."
Lawmakers also need to allow early voting in Mississippi, which is one of three states without it, she said.
"We've been pushing for early voting for some time here in Mississippi," she said. "Early voting is necessary, and I do believe that early voting would eliminate some of the problems that maybe some voters had in getting their ballots cast this time."
The Dispute Over Mississippi’s Voter Rolls
The high number of affidavit ballots has partly been attributed to Mississippi's use of data from credit-reporting company Experian to identify potentially ineligible voters. That led to tens of thousands of registrations being moved to inactive status, including some belonging to eligible voters.
Voting rights advocates have raised concerns that the voter roll purge in Mississippi has disenfranchised eligible voters.
“Once you have done the act of registering to vote, which is your constitutional right, then there shouldn’t be a purging,” Waikinya Clanton, Mississippi state director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told CNN.
Watson, a Republican, told CNN that the affidavit ballot process “is a safety net for errors election commissioners make during voter roll maintenance.”
He said that while it may take longer for the final results to come in, the process will “decrease opportunities for voter fraud in Mississippi.”
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Gabe Whisnant and Dave Siminoff.
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