Mississippians who voted via affidavit ballot because they did not bring their photo identification to the polls when they voted on Election Day have until today at 5 p.m. to bring their photo ID to their county circuit clerk’s office to ensure their votes are counted.

The Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, Mississippi Votes, Immigration Equality for Justice, Unite Here, Mississippi United, the People’s Advocacy Institute and other voting-rights organizations hosted a press conference today at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations to encourage affidavit voters to check to make sure their ballot was counted and kept momentum going for future elections.

“If you had a photo ID issue at the polls, please, please, please go to your circuit clerk’s office. That process is called curing your ballot,” Lily Moens, director of policy and advocacy at Mississippi Votes said at a Tuesday press conference. “So, if you hear ‘curing your ballot,’ that means that is an issue that voters themselves can fix. It’s a photo ID issue. Canvassing is what we’ve seen since Tuesday. That is what the election commission is doing, where they are going through every single affidavit ballot envelope and looking up that voter’s information in the system. So, if anyone has relatives outside of the state of Mississippi, like I do, that say, ‘What’s taking so long? What’s going on?’ That’s what’s taking so long. It’s part of our election process. They’re looking those ballots up one by one and checking them in the system to see if they can find that voter in the system. So, that’s what canvassing is.”

“I know that one election does not change the world, but we have been working our butts off for years to make sure that we can change each other’s lives, and we will continue to do that. And we know that policy has an effect and regardless of who is this office, we’re going to make sure that they work to change the lives and the conditions of the people that we represent and the people and the stories that we hear every day,” Brooke Collins Floyd, coordinator of the Jackson Peopleā€™s Assembly at the Peopleā€™s Advocacy Institute in Jackson, said at the press conference.

State Reporter Heather Harrison has won more than a dozen awards for her multi-media journalism work. At Mississippi State University, she studied public relations and broadcast journalism, earning her Communication degree in 2023. For three years, Heather worked at The Reflector student newspaper: first as a staff reporter, then as the news editor and finally, as the editor-in-chief. This is where her passion for politics and government reporting began.
Heather started working at the Mississippi Free Press three days after graduation in 2023. She also worked part time for Starkville Daily News after college covering the Board of Aldermen meetings.
In her free time, Heather likes to sit on the porch, read books and listen to Taylor Swift. A native of Hazlehurst, she now lives in Brandon with her wife and their Boston Terrier, Finley, and calico cat, Ravioli.