Hinds County Election Commissioners completed the affidavit curing process, rejecting the majority of affidavit ballots cast in Mississippi’s largest county. The county accepted just 817 affidavit ballots, while rejecting 1,609, a rejection rate of about 66.3%. That’s higher than in most counties, and the total is significantly less than the thousands of affidavit ballots that observers had expected Hinds County to deliver.
Hinds County election officials are still tallying up the votes cast in each race, including Mississippi’s pivotal U.S. Senate race where Democratic challenger Scott Colom currently leads incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by over 3,000 votes.
District 1 accepted 167 affidavit ballots and rejected 349.
District 2 accepted 126 ballots and rejected 221.
District 3 accepted 119 votes and rejected 268.
District 4 accepted 224 and rejected 289.
District 5, which includes Jackson State University, accepted 181 affidavit ballots and rejected 482.
“We have a lot of people who do voter registration drive, and on campus there were several voter registration drives,” Hinds County District 5 Election Commissioner Felicia McClinton told the Mississippi Free Press on Wednesday morning. “That’s all good, but after the drive, you have to submit your paperwork in to the circuit clerk. I believe strongly that they failed to meet the deadline, so therefore those ballots were those applications were not processed.”
Local election officials across Mississippi have until Friday, Nov. 13, to complete counting and certify election results.
Editor’s Note: Last night, the Mississippi Free Press erroneously reported that there were 8,000 affidavit ballots in Hinds County. We have corrected that post to clarify that those are absentee ballots. We regret the error.
