Colom rips ‘unlawful attack’ after Hyde-Smith demands ballot preservation in Mississippi

An attorney for Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom said Republican efforts to separate particular ballots are illegal under state law and should not be followed, according to a letter sent to county election commissioners Thursday.

The letter is in reaction to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) request to all 82 Mississippi counties that they isolate all affidavit ballots— often called provisional ballots — from others in preparation for possible legal challenge. Colom’s lawyer argued that it is against the law for election commissioners to separate any processed ballots and highlighted that there is no legal mechanism to challenge a federal election in Mississippi.

“If you depart from ordinary election procedures as you have been asked to do, you will violate Mississippi voters’ rights and Mississippi election law,” wrote Jaquelyn Lopez, a lawyer with the Democratic law firm Elias Law Group.

The dispute centers around Mississippi’s Senate race between Colom and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), which has not been called as of Friday morning. The Democrat holds a narrow lead of 1,936 votes as of 10:30 a.m. Friday, with officials continuing to count outstanding ballots. A Democratic win in the Deep South state would be a massive upset.

Colom’s legal team said the GOP request would amount to changing election processes in the middle of an election, something specifically cautioned against by the state Supreme Court, and may lead to ballots being separated from their envelopes, risking voter secrecy.

“There is no basis whatsoever in Mississippi law for creating or maintaining records that would allow any accepted ballot to be linked to any particular voter’s identity. Doing so would violate voters’ constitutional rights,” the lawyer wrote.

Lopez wrote that Hyde-Smith’s team cites a legal provision allowing them to inspect ballot boxes for “election contest” purposes, something not legally available for the federal Senate races, just for the legislature. This, she said, makes their claim moot.

“Subsection (2) of § 23-15-911 confirms the point, expressly providing that the examination provision ‘shall apply in the case of an election contest regarding the seat of a member of the state Legislature.’ No similar language makes the examination provision available for an election to federal office,” Lopez wrote.

“Do not segregate accepted affidavit ballots from other paper ballots. And certainly do not do anything that would allow a particular ballot to be traced to a particular voter, in violation of the ‘fundamental principle of the right to cast a secret ballot,”’ the lawyer added.