The Republican Party is demanding that Mississippi election officials “separate and preserve” all provisional ballots cast in the midterms — the first step in a likely bid to throw out votes in the state’s extremely close U.S. Senate race*.
The vote count is ongoing, and Democrat Scott Colom currently leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith ® by several hundred votes, with certification due by Nov. 13. His victory would represent a significant upset in the state’s Republican-dominated politics.
Did they stop counting them? The number seems to be holding steady at 96%
https://apps.npr.org/2026-election-results/mississippi.html
Provisional ballots are created when a voter shows up at the poll, but there’s some kind of problem with their registration that prevents them from voting. On election day the provisional ballots are tossed in a metaphorical pile labelled “in case of close race, open me.”
In most elections, the margin of victory is high enough that no one needs to open the provisional ballots or check their eligibility.
But in this race, it is close enough, so they now need to check whether each individual provisional vote is really eligible to vote or not. This is called “chase and cure,” and it usually involves tracking down and talking to the voters and others (the chase) and getting whatever documentation is missing to establish the eligibility (the cure).
The Republican party doesn’t want these ballots to be cured or counted, because they expect the votes inside to skew heavily Democratic. So they will oppose. Partly because they caused a bunch of the provisional ballots by kicking people off the rolls wrongly.
However, I think this is a pretty good position for Colom, if he has an 1,800 lead or so, and he expects any added votes to skew to him.
So, let me get this straight: the Republican candidate is currently behind and wants them to stop counting?
Reminds me of 2020 election when in some states, Trump was urging the election officials to stop counting ballots, meanwhile urging other states to keep count every ballot.
Self awareness is not his strong suit. That was stop counting in Michigan but keep counting in AZ. Fucking putz.
That assumes that Trump was unaware of the hypocrisy, and would have cared if he had realized. That is a false assumption - Trump is a psychopath, literally doesn’t feel bad about breaking moral norms.
I think the whole strategy is to win the provisional ballot fight and get the secretary of state to trigger a recount on the main ballots and hope that recount goes really well for them and shutdown any further recounting after that and then somehow keep the provisionals from ever being counted.
I think it’s a lot of hopium.
Lmao, Mississippi doesn’t have a recount mechanism, literally the only state without one.
I actually didn’t doubt they have lawyers standing by with a completely procedurally unsound emergency brief to the Supreme Court to demand they stop counting, ready to file at any moment Colom gets behind in the count.
They expect them to be heavily Democratic because the voter purge they performed to suppress votes targeted likely Democratic voters.
It’s been at that same percentage for over a day. I should have mentioned that part.
It’s Mississippi, they’re slow counters.
Do you know WHY it takes Mississippi this long to count the votes?
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…
I heard an Alabamian say “Thank God for Mississippi, or we’d be forty-tenth in education.”
I’m impressed they made it to 96 honestly
Maybe some red hat observer inspecting each counted?
I think they allow any postal ballots with postal date up to election day, so they have to wait 10 days IIRC for them to arrive. Normally it doesn’t matter because a clear winner is apparent before it gets to that.