Scott Colom's Lead Grows to 2,129 Votes in Mississippi, and Colom Attacks the Experian Voter-Roll Checks Behind the Affidavit Pile
The AP tally read Friday afternoon puts Colom at 467,312 votes to Hyde-Smith's 465,183 with every precinct reporting and the race still too early to call. The first completed affidavit counts in North Mississippi netted the incumbent just 71 votes, and Colom is now blaming the secretary of state's credit-data checks for pushing voters onto affidavit ballots in the first place.
Democrat Scott Colom's lead in Mississippi's uncalled Senate race grew again on Friday. The Associated Press tally, read Friday afternoon, puts Colom at 467,312 votes to Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's 465,183 — a margin of 2,129 votes, up from 2,010 in the AP count at midday and 1,813 on Thursday night. Every precinct in the state is now reporting, an estimated 96.77 percent of the vote is counted, and the AP still rates the race too early to call.
The remaining count is the affidavit pile — Mississippi's provisional ballots — and the first counties to finish counting them are not giving Hyde-Smith the gains she needs. In Alcorn, Chickasaw and Itawamba counties in North Mississippi, which have completed their affidavit counts, Hyde-Smith netted just 71 votes in total, the Mississippi Free Press reported, despite holding substantial overall leads in two of the three. Colom overperformed his countywide share among affidavit voters in all three; rejection rates on the ballots ran from 26.7 percent in Alcorn to 48.5 percent in Chickasaw. Bigger piles remain: Lee County cast 1,545 affidavit ballots, and Clay County's election commission does not count its affidavit ballots until Nov. 10-12.
On Friday the fight widened from the ballots to the rolls themselves. Colom condemned Secretary of State Michael Watson's use of Experian, the credit reporting company, to check Mississippi's voter rolls, arguing in Democracy Docket's live coverage that the practice improperly moved voters to inactive status — which is what forced so many of them to vote by affidavit ballot on Tuesday — and contributed to the problems in the closely contested race. Colom said he had warned about the issue months earlier. Election expert Stephen Richer, the former Republican elections chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, has noted that under Mississippi law most affidavit ballots will be counted, which is good news for the Colom campaign.
Nothing about the race is official yet. Counties certify their counts by Nov. 13, and the affidavit review — including the Nov. 10 deadline for voters who lacked photo ID to cure their ballots — runs into next week. What Friday established is the direction of travel: the lead is growing slowly, the first affidavit counts are breaking closer than the counties that cast them, and both campaigns are now arguing about how the pile got so large.
