Mississippi

Mississippi: US Supreme Court leaves in place state’s voting ban for people convicted of some crimes | Mark Sherman/Associated Press

The Supreme Court on Monday left in place Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era practice of removing voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies, including nonviolent crimes such as forgery and timber theft. The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Mississippi residents who have completed their sentences, but who have been unable to regain their right to vote. The court’s action let stand a ruling by the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected the claim that permanent loss of voting rights amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. Mississippi legislators, not the courts, must decide whether to change the laws, the 5th circuit said. Read Article

Mississippi: GOP asks court to change voting rules in one state, with impact for all | Patrick Marley and Colby Itkowitz/The Washington Post

A panel of federal judges heard arguments Tuesday in a case that could upend the rules for counting a sliver of mail ballots in Mississippi just weeks before Election Day, with possible ramifications for all states. At issue is a Mississippi law that allows mail ballots to be counted if they arrive up to five days after Election Day and are postmarked by Election Day or earlier. Seventeen other states and Washington, D.C., have laws allowing postmarked mail ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day, according to the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. The case in Mississippi is one example of a nationwide effort by Republicans to invalidate mail ballots over issues unrelated to whether they were cast by a legitimate voter. Republicans say they want to ensure states strictly follow voting laws, while Democrats and voting rights advocates say Republicans are trying to throw out otherwise valid votes because Democrats have disproportionately embraced mail voting. Read Article

Mississippi: Voting rights groups push for answers from election officials about ballot shortages | Michael Goldberg/Associated Press

One month after Mississippi’s November statewide election, voting rights groups are expressing concern over a lack of information from election officials in Hinds County regarding problems that led to shortages of ballots at polling precincts. Civil rights organizations, including the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, have requested meetings and more details about why the wrong ballots were ordered, causing shortages during the competitive governor’s race and other down-ballot contests. The groups claim that their inquiries have been largely met with silence from the Hinds County Election Commissioners, who have not immediately responded to questions. Read Article

A Mississippi voting meltdown deserves more attention than it’s getting | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

The 2023 off-cycle election concluded with overall smooth proceedings, but Hinds County, Mississippi, emerged as a significant exception. Despite high expected turnout for a competitive gubernatorial race, precincts in Hinds County repeatedly ran out of ballots, leading to long lines and frustrated voters. Local officials cited unexpectedly large turnout as the main problem, with some pointing to issues related to 2020 redistricting, which changed precinct lines and split precincts in new ways. While State law requires counties to have ballots for 60% of total active voters, local officials have discretion over distribution. The situation in Hinds County highlights concerns about election preparation and challenges in ensuring adequate ballot supplies. Read Article

Mississippi: A cyber breach delays poll worker training in Hinds County before the statewide vote | Associated Press

In Mississippi’s Hinds County, election officials faced a time crunch to complete necessary poll worker training after a computer breach in early September hindered their access. Typically, this training is finished by early October, well in advance of the November general election, but due to the breach, staff had to work up to the deadline to complete it. Federal authorities are currently investigating the incident. While the cyber incident did cause a slight delay in voter registration processing, it was resolved within a few days, and all applications were processed before the October 10 deadline. Read Article

Mississippi Secretary of State, other state websites go offline for several hours less than two weeks before election | Mississippi Today

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s website, along with several other state agency websites, experienced an outage for several hours due to an “unexpected issue,” just 12 days before the 2023 statewide election. Basic voting information, such as polling place locations, sample ballots, and campaign finance reports, was inaccessible during this time. The Mississippi Information Technology Services agency, responsible for managing the state’s website servers, reported that the situation was not related to cybersecurity or data integrity concerns. Last year, on Election Day in 2022, the Secretary of State’s website was down for several hours due to a cyberattack, but officials assured that the election system remained secure and uncompromised. Read Article

Mississippi: New voting machines can help keep elections secure but will require funding | Kobee Vance/MPR

Mississippi is currently investing in a new voting infrastructure that will rely more on paper ballots as a backup to the machines that scan in votes. This was originally funded through a law passed last year. It allows for local municipalities to print ballots on demand and has specialized touchscreen voting machines for those with disabilities. But Secretary of State Michael Watson says there are some additional costs with these machines that need additional legislative funding to maintain software and security. “I think it’s important to make sure that Mississippians are educated, and they say, ‘well, we’re still voting on machines.’ Well it’s a machine that counts a paper ballot,” says Watson. “So if there’s ever an issue, you can come back and say ‘you know what, let’s look to the paper.’ And so I think Mississippians will feel more confident about that.” Watson says the continued security maintenance that modern voting machines require will be a recurring cost for local municipalities, and much of this will be handled by the Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services.

Full Article: New voting machines in Mississippi can help keep elections secure but will require funding

Mississippi Secretary of State website victim of cyberattack | Tami Abdollah and Josh Meyer/USA Today

Some Mississippi state websites were briefly knocked offline Tuesday after so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against them as voters turned out at polling sites across the state and the country. U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials stressed that such attacks, which flood websites with computer messages, would not affect the actual vote totals. The two U.S. cybersecurity officials spoke on condition of anonymity late Tuesday to discuss ongoing operations. The two officials with the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said there was no specific or credible threat disrupting election infrastructure, or any activity that should cause voters to question the integrity of the election. Mississippi officials confirmed the “abnormally large increase in traffic volume” due to the DDoS activity, which led to some of its websites being “periodically inaccessible” Tuesday afternoon. “We want to be clear and (reassure) Mississippians our election system is secure and has not been compromised,” the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office said in a statement.

Full Article: Mississippi Secretary of State website victim of cyberattack

Mississippi: So long, paperless voting machines | Press Register

It is richly ironic that it took a fake election scandal to finally convince lawmakers and election officials in Mississippi of the real potential for a rigged or botched election. Thanks to Donald Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden and the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, Mississippi Republicans decided to finally act and pass a law this year that will require all counties in Mississippi by 2024 to have a system in place that provides a paper backup to electronically tabulated vote totals. Mississippi is one of just six states where a significant number of voters still only have access to paperless machines. For those Mississippi voters, approximately 1 out of 3, the only record of their choices is what’s recorded on the electronic memory card inside the voting machines themselves. That includes Leflore and Carroll counties. The percentage, though, is a marked improvement from just a few years ago, when Mississippi counties — with the misguided consent of both the U.S. Justice Department and the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office — began removing en masse the balky external printers with which the touchscreen machines were initially equipped. Verified Voting is a nonpartisan organization that maintains a database on the election equipment used in every U.S. county. According to its records, 75% of Mississippi voters in 2016 lived in counties where the balloting was done on touchscreen machines without a voter-verified paper trail. By 2020, that figure was down to 56%. It’s projected to drop to 34% by this year’s November elections. The new law should bring the figure down to zero in a couple more years.

Full Article: So long, paperless voting machines | Press Register

Mississippi: Hinds County election commissioner questions how contractor was chosen to deliver voting machines | Anthony Warren/WLBT

Correspondence obtained by WLBT shows that Hinds County hired a contractor to deliver voting machines for next week’s special election before the company submitted a bid for the work, and after a more experienced vendor’s bid had been rejected. The county recently selected Terry’s Installation to deliver voting machines, chairs, and tables to all 108 precincts for the November 2 special election. An email from District 5 Election Commissioner Shirley Varnado questions why the county chose the firm prior to it submitting a bid and prior to the company having the information needed so it could submit a bid. Meanwhile, a more experienced contractor’s bid was rejected the same day it was submitted, her email states. “It is blatantly obvious that improprieties are at play and every effort is being made to malign the work of the election commission,” she said. She and other commissioners have also questioned why a firm with no experience was chosen while the bid submitted by Kenneth Williams was turned down. In her letter, Varnado cites state statute, which requires the county to choose the “lowest and best bidder” for contracts. “The word ‘BEST’ clearly rules out Terry(’s) Installation, who voluntarily stated that they had never completed a task of this magnitude,” she wrote.

Full Article: Election commissioner questions how contractor was chosen to deliver voting machines

Mississippi: To the Man Who Shouted at Me About Stolen Elections | Margaret McMullan/The Bulwark

To the man who shouted at me about stolen elections,

Just thought I’d follow up about our recent encounter at the polling place where I’m a poll worker. First, I’m glad you took the time to come to the fire station and cast your vote for mayor of Pass Christian, our beautiful little gem on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Good on you for making the effort. Second, how dare you say, When do you start stuffing the ballot box? Seriously? Let me explain how this works. During our election on June 8, I worked the polls for our ward. My fellow poll workers (all women—go figure) and I had been in that hot fire station garage since 6 a.m., when we started setting up to open the polls at 7. All of us (even ones like me with years of experience) had gone through half a day of training, re-read and highlighted our voting manuals, and brought our own food and water knowing we’d be on our own for the next fourteen hours.

Source: To the Man Who Shouted at Me About Stolen Elections – The Bulwark

Mississippi Secretary of State defends own comment about ‘woke’ voters | Emily Wagster Pettus/Associated Press

Mississippi’s top elections official says he thinks people are doing a “hatchet job” on him over comments he made in a television interview about “woke” and “uninformed” voters on college campuses. Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican, said March 26 on WLOX-TV that he opposes any move by the federal government to set new rules about voter registration or mail-in voting. “Think about all these ‘woke’ college university students now who would automatically be registered to vote, whether they wanted to or not,” Watson said. “Again, if they didn’t know to opt out, they would be automatically registered to vote. And then they receive this mail-in ballot that they didn’t even know was coming because they didn’t know they registered to vote. You have an uninformed citizen who may not be prepared and ready to vote, automatically it’s forced on them, ‘Hey, go and make a choice.’ And our country’s going to pay for those choices.”

Full Article: Mississippi official defends own comment about ‘woke’ voters

Mississippi debates quicker purge of voter rolls | Emily Wagster Pettus/Associated Press

Mississippi residents who skip some elections would risk being purged from voter rolls, under bills being considered at the state Capitol. Critics say the proposals would endanger constitutional rights in a state where some older Black residents still remember facing violence or economic repercussions for registering to vote. Supporters of House Bill 4 and Senate Bill 2588 say keeping voter rolls up to date can be difficult, and poorly kept rolls can make it challenging for courts to find enough people for jury duty. Under current Mississippi law, county election commissioners may remove a person’s name from a voter roll if that person has died, moved away, been judged mentally incompetent or been convicted of a disenfranchising crime. The bills say commissioners also would be required to remove the name of a person who fails to vote at least once during a four-year period and fails to respond to certified mail from the election commission that seeks to confirm the person still lives at the address where he or she is registered. Voters’ names could not be purged from the rolls within 90 days of an election, and the county would have to maintain records for at least four years showing a purged name and the reason the name was removed from the rolls. Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said he supports the bills, which are based on an Ohio law that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling in 2018. Hosemann served 12 years as secretary of state, Mississippi’s top election official. He told reporters Thursday that having a system to keep accurate voter rolls is important.

Full Article: Analysis: Mississippi debates quicker purge of voter rolls