Democrat Scott Colom’s lead over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s still-uncalled U.S. Senate race has widened to 2,990 votes in the latest Associated Press tally — Colom 470,074 to Hyde-Smith 467,084, with an estimated 97.81% of votes counted and the race still too early to call. The lead has grown step by step as counties work through the affidavit ballots: in Madison County the affidavit vote broke 546 to 423 for Colom, and even in Rankin County, where Hyde-Smith won the affidavit ballots 476 to 472 and took the absentee vote by a wide margin, Colom’s statewide lead still grew. Hinds County, which received more than 8,000 affidavit ballots, is expected to release more results on Wednesday, and counties must finalize their totals in time for the state’s certification deadline on November 13.
Hyde-Smith has also broken a week of public silence. In a rare hallway interview with reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday morning, the senator insisted the remaining ballots can still save her: “We’ve got few thousand (votes) out, so we’re feeling very optimistic,” she said. “People vote with their wallets, and gas prices are high. Mississippi, like I said, we’ve got a lot of votes still out and we are counting and we hope to come back to represent them the way that we have.” Asked why the race had become so close against a challenger the forecasters had given almost no chance, she did not answer and walked into a private office with her staff. Colom, for his part, says Hyde-Smith can’t point to a direction where she has a possibility to win — a claim her remaining path, now short of 3,000 votes with the count nearly complete, makes harder to dispute by the hour.
The affidavit fight at the centre of this count also drew in Brandon Presley, Mississippi’s 2023 Democratic nominee for governor, who said he watched officials reject affidavit ballots because poll workers had failed to initial them. Presley said it “makes me sick” to see ballots thrown out over a poll worker’s error even when the voter’s affidavit envelope was properly signed. The number of ballots affected is not yet clear. Mississippi’s election handbook instructs officials to reject paper ballots missing the designated poll worker’s initials — the same affidavit process state GOP chairman Mike Hurst called “very abnormal” in scale when this article first reported the roughly 17,000 affidavit ballots cast.
For Mississippi voters, the remaining days of counting are personal: whether an affidavit ballot cast in good faith survives a poll worker’s missing initials decides real votes in the closest Senate race of the 2026 elections — and the winner will take the seat into a new Congress in January where every Senate vote counts.
Mississippi's U.S. Senate race is heading into a ballot fight. Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 1,822 votes — 466,747 to 464,925 in the Associated Press tally — with about 96% of the expected vote counted and the race still uncalled. At a press conference on Thursday outside the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Mike Hurst, who also serves as general counsel to the Republican National Committee, said Republicans estimate about 17,000 affidavit ballots and more than 3,000 mail-in ballots are still outstanding — roughly 20,000 ballots in all. Asked whether the affidavit number was normal for a Mississippi election, Hurst said: “To my knowledge, that is very abnormal in any race that we've seen in Mississippi's history.” For scale, the AP reported 7,612 affidavit ballots were cast in the entire 2022 midterm election in Mississippi, of which 5,710 were counted.
Affidavit ballots are Mississippi's version of provisional ballots — cast when a voter's name is not on the poll book or they lack an acceptable photo ID — and they are reviewed by county election commissioners before they count. Hurst said the party has more than 50 volunteer lawyers and observers working around the state, that some counties have refused to share their affidavit numbers, which he called “a little suspect,” and that Republicans are prepared to litigate if procedures are not followed. “We at the Mississippi Republican Party are going to fight like hell to make sure that every legal vote that was cast is counted,” he said, adding: “We believe if the laws are followed to a T, and these 20,000 outstanding ballots are counted, that Senator Hyde-Smith will be reelected.” On Thursday, lawyers for the Hyde-Smith campaign sent a letter to election officials in all 82 counties demanding that every affidavit ballot be separated, secured and preserved, accepted, rejected and unresolved alike; the National Republican Senatorial Committee released the letter the same day.
Secretary of State Michael Watson has given the official numbers as they stand: by Thursday night, 6,936 affidavit ballots had been processed with roughly 80% of them accepted, and about 3,300 absentee mail ballots were still out; by Friday, the processed affidavit count had risen to 9,242. Watson has not confirmed the Republicans' estimate of how many affidavit ballots remain in total. One reason the number may be high: more than 100 precincts were changed or closed in Mississippi this year, which pushed more voters onto affidavit ballots. The Colom campaign answered the preservation letter by accusing Republicans of seeking to violate Mississippi voters' rights, and Colom's campaign manager called the move a “desperate stunt.” Voters who cast an affidavit ballot for lack of photo ID have until November 10 to cure it, and counties must certify by November 13. Mississippi law gives candidates no right to demand a recount, so the fight will be over which of these ballots count.
For Mississippi voters, what happens next is simple and personal: a Senate seat — and with it, part of the balance of power in Washington — will be decided by whether roughly 20,000 pieces of paper were filled in, sealed and reviewed exactly as the law requires. Every voter who cast one of those ballots can check whether it was accepted, and anyone who voted without photo ID has until November 10 to fix it at their circuit clerk's office and make their vote count.
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