Mississippi Senate Race: Colom's Lead Grows to 2,010 Votes as the Fight Over Affidavit Ballots Heats Up
Scott Colom's lead in Mississippi's uncalled Senate race ticked up again on Friday, to 2,010 votes in the Associated Press count. The argument is no longer just about the count - it is about the affidavit ballots still inside it, which one campaign wants separated and preserved and the other says the law will count.
The Associated Press count in Mississippi's Senate race moved again on Friday: Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith 467,066 votes to 465,056, a margin of 2,010 votes, with every precinct reporting and an estimated 96.25 percent of the vote counted. The AP still rates the race too early to call. The lead has now grown at every stage of the count - 1,813 in this station's 5 a.m. file, 1,936 by 9 a.m., and 2,010 by Friday afternoon.
What changed on Friday is that the remaining ballots became the story. The Hyde-Smith campaign, joined by national Republican organizations, has sent letters to county election officials demanding that affidavit ballots - Mississippi's provisional ballots - be separated and preserved, citing state law, in what Democracy Docket's live coverage describes as a likely first step toward contesting some of those votes. The Colom campaign is pushing back against the demand.
Colom also aimed at how so many affidavit ballots came to exist. He criticized Secretary of State Michael Watson's use of credit data to check the state's voter rolls this year, which may have left large numbers of voters declared 'inactive' - and voters listed inactive had to cast affidavit ballots on Election Day. Elections expert Stephen Richer, the former Republican elections chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, notes that under Mississippi law most affidavit ballots will in fact be counted.
The first completed affidavit counts suggest why both sides care. In three North Mississippi counties that have finished counting them, the Mississippi Free Press reports, Colom is running well ahead of his overall share among affidavit voters - in Chickasaw County he took 77 percent of the accepted affidavit ballots, and even in Itawamba County, where Hyde-Smith leads by nearly 66 points overall, her affidavit-ballot margin was 20 points narrower. Statewide, estimates of the uncounted affidavit pile run from 12,000 to 20,000. The windows for mail ballots and photo-ID cures close around November 10, counties certify by November 13, and Mississippi has no automatic recount - so the next four days of paper, not speeches, decide this race.
