Andy Hawkins moved back to Bolivar County, Mississippi, from Hot Springs, Arkansas, in the fall of 2025. On Sept. 14, he unsuccessfully attempted to verify his voter registration on the Mississippi secretary of state’s website. He then visited the Bolivar County circuit clerk’s website to see if he could check his voter registration there.
Hawkins was unable to check his registration on the website, but while perusing it, he scrolled to the bottom of the homepage and noticed the company Magnetic Arrow Designs based in Biloxi, Mississippi, created the website. He clicked on the hyperlink for the company’s website and a pop-up showing a foreign online gambling advertisement filled his screen. Being tech-savvy, he immediately realized the site was hacked.
“That’s one thing that worries me, if you can download anything from that site,” Hawkins told the Mississippi Free Press on Wednesday. “You know what I’m saying? Like, if you can download a voter registration (form), that’s where they can inject something into somebody’s computer. After I saw that the company was hacked, I’m not going to click on any links (on the circuit clerk’s website), and there’s lots of links and lots of links that don’t go to where they’re supposed to.”
He went to the Bolivar County circuit clerk’s office on Monday to inform them of the issue. Hawkins said the workers seemed aware of the issue but were unsure of who was administrating the site. He even offered to help them fix the issue and provided his phone number and email. The next day, he returned and still did not receive any answers.
On Monday evening, the Mississippi Free Press published an article about a voter not being able to check his voter registration using the Mississippi secretary of state’s Y’all Vote tool despite his county circuit clerk verifying his registration information.
“When I saw your article,” Hawkins told this reporter, “that’s when I was like, ‘Hm, maybe they can help get to the bottom and we’ll get this fixed.’ Because, God forbid, somebody get a virus by clicking on something like that just looking for voter registration.”
He reported his findings to the Mississippi Free Press on Wednesday morning, which prompted this reporter to leave a voicemail for Bolivar County Administrator Will Hooker and an email to the county’s IT specialist, Jared Matthews.
A spokesperson from Hooker’s office called back on Thursday to tell this reporter that the circuit clerk’s office maintains the website, and the County itself has no involvement with the maintenance and upkeep of the website. But the spokesperson said Bolivar County Circuit Clerk Judith D. Thompson is aware of the problem with the Magnetic Arrow Designs website.
Hawkins said he went on the Internet Archives to see when the company’s website was hacked, and he said it happened sometime after July.
Magnetic Arrow Designs also designed the websites for about a dozen other companies, including a few in Mississippi, like the Biloxi Historical Society, Gulf Coast Piano Shows, Ocean Springs Archive, Shearwater Dental in Ocean Springs, Mississippi Fishing Charter, Coast Accommodation Group on the Gulf Coast and Krew of Neptune on the Gulf Coast.
The Mississippi Free Press called Magnetic Arrow Designs on Sept. 25 and left a voicemail warning the company about the website hack. Magnetic Arrow Designs did not respond by press time.
Hawkins warned Mississippians that just because a website that ends in .ms like the Bolivar County Circuit Clerk’s website does not mean it is based in Mississippi. It is a code for Monserrat, a small British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean.
“Email is how companies get hacked,” he said. “People don’t understand different top-level domains. They think .com. And if they’re writing an email, it’s just something they won’t even see to the right of the dot. They just think .com anyway. And more often than not, you get all kinds of misdirected email out there. That’s how you get hacked.”
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