JACKSON — Rukia Lumumba was the last person in a long queue of voters waiting to cast a ballot on the final day of in-person absentee voting on Saturday, Nov. 24. The line snaked from the basement of the circuit-clerk’s office outside to the sidewalks. Volunteers passed out water, and the nonprofit organization Pizza to the Polls said via Twitter that it sent 10 boxes of cheese pizza to ease hunger pains.
Lumumba is an attorney and founder of the People’s Advocacy Institute, an organization that leads grassroots voter awareness and registration drives. Inside the circuit-clerk’s office, she signed her name across the flap of the envelope, and cast her vote in the U.S. Senate run-off between U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy. She basked in the peer-to-peer encouragement, and said when some people in the queue wanted to give up and go home, five more would turn around to emphasize the importance of casting a vote in this midterm election.
“It was really good energy,” Lumumba told the Jackson Free Press. “[W]hat I heard over and over again is more of a message around wanting to have representation who cares about them.”
