USAupdated 25m ago2 min read
Scott Colom Leads Mississippi Senate Race With 97% Counted, Winner Still Not Certified
“That ‘wave of energy’ was ‘largely led by Black voters who were most under attack”
“As of Friday, 9,242 affidavit ballots had been processed, and 3,139 mail ballots were still outstanding”
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
With ~97% of votes counted, Colom leads Hyde-Smith by about 2,000 votes. No winner certified yet; thousands of ballots remain could trigger a court challenge.
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Mississippi Senate, still open
Democrat Scott Colom led Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi by 2,498 votes with roughly 97% of the vote counted, while about 30,000 ballots remained outstanding and the race had no official winner.
As of Friday, 9,242 affidavit ballots had been processed, and 3,139 mail ballots were still outstanding.
Colom held a 2,574-vote lead and Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson reported just over 3,000 mail-in ballots still needed to be processed, with legal receipt allowed until Nov. 10 if postmarked by Election Day.
ANSA Latina said provisional results released Thursday night showed Colom at 49% and Hyde-Smith at 48.9% with about 96% of votes counted, and it said thousands of ballots still needed to be tallied could keep the race open for days.
BBC said the deadline to certify results of the election is 13 November and that Mississippi does not have automatic recounts for tight races or allow candidates to request one.
Provisional ballots dispute
Hyde-Smith’s campaign urged election officials in the 82 counties to separate provisional ballots to verify their eligibility, and Colom’s lawyers challenged the demand as extraordinary measures. "this election is not over" and "We are not backing down," while it said the campaign would monitor remaining ballots and protect the integrity of the process. Colom’s campaign called the provisional-ballot segregation move a "desperate stunt," and it added that Colom said on Wednesday, "I'm confident once the process plays out, where we are, where the ballots are, we're gonna win."
Comercio TV said it was estimated there were between 10,000 and 15,000 provisional ballots pending verification, and it said Mississippi allows counting mail-in ballots that arrive within five business days after the election. La Presse said Mississippi must certify its results by November 13 and that a candidate could seek judicial intervention to count ballots set aside for irregularities, while it said both candidates expressed optimism without claiming victory.
What a Colom win changes
Multiple outlets tied a Colom victory to Mississippi’s long Democratic absence in the U.S. Senate, with Comercio TV saying Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982.
He'd be the first Black U.S. senator to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction and the first Black senator from the state elected by popular vote.
Colom would become the state’s first African American senator since Reconstruction after the Civil War, and it said the electoral uncertainty centered on mail-in ballots and provisional ballots.
BBC said Colom would be the first Democratic candidate elected to the upper chamber in more than 40 years if he wins, and it said Hyde-Smith had Donald Trump’s endorsement.
La Presse said a Democrat victory would be the biggest surprise of these midterm elections and that it would make Scott Colom the first Black senator from this former Confederate state since 1881.