Lawyers for Democrat Scott Colom are warning county election commissioners and circuit clerks across Mississippi that a demand from the National Republican Senatorial Committee to segregate affidavit ballots from other ballots “will violate Mississippi voters’ rights and Mississippi election law.” The back-and-forth comes as Colom leads incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,882 votes in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race.
“Earlier this afternoon, you received a letter from counsel to Cindy Hyde-Smith for U.S. Senate, demanding that you take unlawful and extraordinary measures in handling affidavit ballots in the U.S. Senate race,” the letter from the Elias Law Group says. “… Hyde-Smith cites no legal authority whatsoever in demanding that affidavit ballots, once processed and accepted, be maintained separately from regular and absentee ballots. That is because there is no legal authority for that demand.”
The letter notes that the “Mississippi Supreme Court has specifically cautioned against departures from the required counting procedures that would undermine ‘the secrecy of a voter’s ballot’ and ‘violate the fundamental principle of the right to cast a secret ballot.'”
