Mississippi’s Senate Seat Is Still Undecided. Today Is the Last Day for Late Ballots to Count.

A full week after Election Day, nobody knows who will represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate. Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith trails Democrat Scott Colom by roughly 2,500 votes out of nearly a million cast, and today is the day the last ballots have to come in.

The latest Associated Press tally, reported Monday by WJTV, had Colom at 467,961 votes, Hyde-Smith at 465,425 and independent Ty Pinkins at 20,032. That is a gap of 2,536 votes, about a quarter of one percent. The race has not been called.

What’s still out

Mississippi’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson, has been posting the statewide numbers himself. His Monday afternoon update is the most recent snapshot of what is left to count.

Two kinds of ballots matter here. Absentee mail ballots can still count if they were postmarked by Election Day and reach county officials by today, Nov. 10. Watson said 2,578 of them were still out as of Monday afternoon, down from 2,732 that morning.

The bigger pile is affidavit ballots, Mississippi’s name for provisional ballots. A voter casts one when something can’t be settled at the polling place, such as missing photo ID or a registration question. Counties have processed 15,547 of them and accepted about 76%, according to Watson, which works out to roughly 11,800 votes. Voters whose only problem was ID have until 5 p.m. today to show it to their circuit clerk, Mississippi Today reported.

The county to watch

Hinds County, home to Jackson, is the state’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold. It still had about 7% of its vote outstanding early Monday, according to Mississippi Today.

Tony Gaylor, an attorney for the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, told the outlet the county would likely finish counting affidavits Monday, but the numbers won’t be posted until a county resolution board reviews every accepted affidavit. “They won’t be uploaded until Wednesday, when the (Hinds County) Resolution Board has the final count,” Gaylor said.

Every county has to send certified results to Watson’s office by Friday, Nov. 13.

Hyde-Smith is fighting for every legal vote

Hyde-Smith’s team has made clear it isn’t conceding a seat Republicans have held for decades. On Nov. 5, lawyers for her campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee wrote to all 82 counties demanding that affidavit ballots be kept separate and preserved, along with the records of how each was handled, according to WLBT.

The letter called those ballots “potential evidence in any box examination under § 23-15-911, election contest, or proceeding before the United States Senate.” In plain English: if the final margin is tight and questions remain about which affidavits were accepted, Hyde-Smith wants the paper trail intact.

Colom’s side pushed back hard. Jacquelyn Lopez, a lawyer with Marc Elias’s Democratic firm, told counties in a letter that “if you depart from ordinary election procedures as you have been asked to do, you will violate Mississippi voters’ rights and Mississippi election law,” and argued that keeping accepted ballots separate could risk tying a ballot to a voter.

Hyde-Smith answered on 𝕏 the next day.

What happens next

Today’s deadlines close the door on new ballots. Wednesday brings Hinds County’s final numbers. Friday is certification. After that, Mississippi Today notes, either campaign could challenge accepted ballots, a process that could mean lawsuits in separate county courts.

For now, the math is simple. Colom’s lead is about 2,500 votes, and thousands of mail and affidavit ballots are still being sorted. Hyde-Smith’s campaign says it will watch every one of them.