Tyrone Lewis is expected to be certified this week as the winner in the Hinds County sheriff’s race, but questions remain about the election’s validity, and many suspect the results will be challenged.
The county’s Democratic Executive Committee completed its review of ballots Saturday, and it appears incumbent Sheriff Malcolm McMillin did not get enough votes to push the race into a runoff.
But with questions over voting machine numbers, found ballots and other alleged inconsistencies, McMillin’s team isn’t ready to give up the fight.
“Nobody here knows what the numbers are,” McMillin’s son, Andrew McMillin, said Saturday at the Hinds County Courthouse. “Nobody in here knows what the outcome of this election is today.”
… Andrew McMillin said questions remain about vote totals. He noted that at one precinct, 192 people signed in but only 20 votes were recorded. “It appears they want to go ahead with the certification, despite the discrepancies,” he said. McInnis said he did not find anything unusual about the sign-in discrepancy.
“There are almost always more signatures than there are votes,” he said. “That always happens.” He said it’s due in part to people not voting in every race, and sometimes people sign in but do not vote.
There also has been an issue with officials finding ballots at random over the past few days. Friday afternoon, executive committee members discovered a number of affidavit and absentee ballots that were left behind when precinct bags were initially emptied following Tuesday’s primary.
Saturday morning, Andrew McMillin discovered a new stack of absentee ballots in a box in the courthouse vault. “I noticed them when the vault was open,” he said.
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