This Saturday’s Georgia-Ole Miss game will be the most important college game played on Mississippi soil since, well, at least since 2014 when Mississippi State and Ole Miss were ranked as highly as No. 1 and No. 3.
Alabama was ranked No. 3 and Ole Miss No. 11 on Oct. 4, 2014, when the Rebels won 23-17 at Oxford. Seven days later, Auburn was ranked No. 2 and State No. 3 when the two teams played on at Starkville. State won 38-23 to move to No. 1. Clearly, those games were huge.
Rick Cleveland
This one Saturday (2:30 p.m. at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium) is vitally important — perhaps even more important — for different reasons. A college football playoff berth is likely at stake. In the first 12-team college football rankings ever this week, 7-1 Georgia was ranked No. 3 and Ole Miss was ranked No. 16. But here’s the deal: Should Ole Miss, a 2.5-point underdog, defeat Georgia, the Rebels surely would zoom into the top 12 next week.
On the other hand, an Ole Miss defeat Saturday would be the Rebels’ third. In this new 12-team playoff scenario, three strikes and you’re out. With a loss, Georgia would remain in the playoff picture, but the Bulldogs would lose any chance for a first-round bye.
One indication of this game’s importance: All seats have long since been sold, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get in. Indeed, you can get two club level seats in the south end zone on Seat Geek for $2,304 each. There are cheaper seats elsewhere but none less than $219 apiece. It’s a scalper’s delight.
It is also an incredibly intriguing matchup: Offensive whiz Lane Kiffin vs. defensive mastermind Kirby Smart. Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart vs. Georgia quarterback Carson Beck. Ole Miss, 12-1 in its last 13 home games, faces Georgia, which has won 53 of its last 56 regular season games overall and 23 of its last 24 on the road. Incredibly, those aren’t misprints.
The two head coaches, formerly assistants together under Nick Saban at Alabama, have said nothing to reduce the magnitude of the game. Not that they could.
Said Kiffin: “Anybody who’s gonna win (the national championship) is going to have to go through Georgia. They’re the premier program in college football.”
Meanwhile, Smart talks about the Rebels as if they are the Kansas City Chiefs.
“They’re one of the top passing teams, in my mind, in the country … They’ve done it with tight ends. They’ve done it with backs. They’ve done it with wideouts. It doesn’t matter who it is with Lane. He’s going to plug somebody in there. They’re going to figure out where your weaknesses are, find matchups, and look for coverages and find ways to beat those coverages. They’ve got a guy (Dart) that can do it. This guy’s playing uncanny football when you talk about the accuracy, the completion percentage, the yards he’s throwing it for. He’s not throwing dink and dunk passes now. This guy’s throwing the ball vertical, down the field, shots. Then, when you do that, let’s say you cover all that, and you do that, he can take off and run. You watch a quarterback run reel on this guy, and you don’t have enough people in the box. So, the reason they’re successful is because of the scheme and the players that are in the scheme.”
Dart currently plays the game at an elite level rarely seen in college football. He threw for 515 yards and six touchdowns last week at Arkansas. His numbers — 21 passing touchdowns vs. just three interceptions — are far better than Beck’s (17 TDs, 11 interceptions).
But 360 days ago, Beck threw for 306 yards and two touchdowns in Georgia’s 52-17 trouncing of Ole Miss at Athens. Meanwhile, Dart threw 112 yards and not a single score before being knocked out of the game late in the third quarter. Georgia scored touchdowns on its first four possessions. It was utter dominance.
Can Ole Miss return the favor and slay the SEC’s dragon this time around?
Absolutely, the Rebels can. At their best, the Rebs can play with Georgia, even beat Georgia. In my opinion, the game will come down to which team can a) run the ball successfully and b) protect its quarterback.
Ole Miss doesn’t have to run for 200 yards or anything like that. But the Rebels do have to run it well enough that Georgia can’t, as announcers say, pin their ears back and take dead aim at Dart.
Ole Miss has protected Dart well in every game but two. Kentucky sacked Dart four times. LSU sacked him six times. Not coincidentally, those are the only two games Ole Miss lost. Here’s why: Ole Miss ran the ball only 29 times for 92 yards against Kentucky. The Rebels ran for 180 yards against LSU but inexplicably went away from the run in the second half when the Tigers sacked Dart four times.
Anybody who has watched Georgia under Smart knows you can’t be one-dimensional against the Bulldogs. You have to slow down that pass rush and you do that best by running the football. Example: Texas, ranked No. 1 at the time, ran the ball for only 29 yards and a yard per carry against Georgia. As a result, the Bulldogs sacked Texas quarterbacks six times in a 30-15 victory at Austin.
Yes, Ole Miss can win. The Rebels could do what the Longhorns couldn’t. But Ole Miss must run the ball with some success, and, against Georgia, that’s never easy. The wild card could be Dart’s own running, but that comes with the risk of injury. Against Georgia, we’ve already seen how that works out.
State Sen. Jenifer Branning and incumbent Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens will compete in a runoff election on Nov. 26 after no candidate received a majority of votes in Tuesday’s election for a seat on the state’s highest court.
The election will almost certainly inject partisan politics into what is supposed to be a nonpartisan judicial race over the next three weeks.
Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy. Not only are GOP forces working to oust one of the dwindling number of centrist jurists on the high court, but they appreciate Kitchens is next in line to lead the court as chief justice should current Chief Justice Mike Randolph step down.
In incomplete and unofficial results, Branning received the largest share of the vote total at 41.8%, while Kitchens received 35.6% in the five-person race Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
The runoff will take place just two days before Thanksgiving, ensuring both campaigns will be focused on the difficult task of turning out voters for a holiday-season election, with judicial elections typically receiving less public attention than other positions.
Kitchens, first elected to the court in 2008, is a former district attorney and private-practice lawyer. On the campaign trail, he has pointed to his experience as an attorney and judge, particularly his years prosecuting criminals and his rulings on criminal cases.
Justice Jim Kitchens Credit: MSSC
“During the next three weeks, I’ll be working harder than ever to inform the voters why Jim Kitchens is ready, willing and able to serve them better than any other candidate,” Kitchens said.
Kitchens has raised over $288,000 and spent around $189,000 of that money, leaving him with roughly $98,000 in cash on hand. Most of his campaign donations have come from trial attorneys around the state.
Branning, a private-practice attorney, was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She has led the Senate Elections and Transportation committees. During her time at the Capitol, she has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate leadership, voting against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, voting against expanding Medicaid to the working poor and supporting mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime.
Sen. Jenifer Branning Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
While campaigning for the judicial seat, she has pledged to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she has stopped short of endorsing policy positions — which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing.
Branning has raised over $666,000 and spent roughly $312,000, leaving her with around $354,000 in cash on hand. Several special interest groups and trade associations have donated to her campaign, but the donations have been supercharged by a $250,000 personal loan she gave her campaign. Third-party groups have also spent money on the race.
“There’s a clear choice in this runoff because I’m the only candidate who will bring new energy and constitutional conservative leadership to the Mississippi Supreme Court,” Branning wrote on social media on Wednesday morning.
Incumbent Justice Dawn Beam, who was up for reelection on the Court’s Southern District, also appeared to concede defeat to her challenger, David Sullivan.
“I believe in democracy,” Beam wrote on Tuesday night. “Moreover, I know that God’s plans are perfect. It has been my joy to serve our State for 9 years on the Supreme Court, but the people have spoken.”
With 93% of the votes counted, Sullivan led with 54.8% of the vote, while Beam trailed with 45.2%.
Beam joined the state Supreme Court in 2016 after former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her to the bench to fill the seat left vacant by former Justice Randy Pierce. Sullivan is a public defender in Harrison, Stone and Pearl River counties and has been a municipal judge in D’Iberville since 2019. A Gulfport resident, Sullivan comes from a family of attorneys and judges. His father, Michael D. Sullivan, also served as a Supreme Court justice.
The three candidates competing for the open seat on the Court of Appeals were still locked in a close race that remained too close to call, with a runoff likely, with 92% of the vote total counted. Amy St. Pé led the candidates by receiving 35.1% of the vote. The other two candidates, Jennifer Schloegel and Ian Baker, were so close in votes that the lead for second place continued switching through Wednesday as results trickled in.
Mail-in absentee ballots and affidavit ballots could impact which two candidates in the Court of Appeals race head to a runoff election. State law allows for local election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots until November 13, though the ballots must be postmarked by the date of the election. Counties must certify election results by November 15.
The earliest day voters can cast absentee ballots for a runoff election is November 18, according to an election guide from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office.
Former President Donald Trump won Mississippi handily, and the state’s incumbent congressional leaders facing reelection were returned to office on Tuesday night.
With 98% of the statewide vote in, Trump led Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris 61% to 38% in Mississippi on Tuesday night.
Mississippi’s two contested elections for the state Supreme Court and the open seat on the Court of Appeals remained too close to call on Tuesday night.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, Mississippi’s senior U.S. senator, said at a victory party in downtown Jackson that voters throughout the country were clearly showing they believed “our nation is in crisis” and were ready to turn the page to a new chapter of American politics.
With 90% of votes processed for the Central District seat on the state Supreme Court, none of the five candidates running had an outright majority of the votes cast. Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning, at 41.8% of the vote, and incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens, at 35.6% of the vote, remained the leading candidates.
If no candidate receives an outright majority of the vote, or more than 50%, the two candidates who received the most votes will compete in a runoff election on November 26.
For the Court’s Southern District seat, challenger David Sullivan, at 54.7% of the vote, was leading incumbent Justice Dawn Beam, who had 45.3% of the vote, though the Associated Press had yet to call the race with 93% of the vote counted.
The three candidates competing for the open seat on the Court of Appeals were still locked in a close race that remained too close to call, with a runoff likely, with 92% of the vote total counted. Amy St. Pé led the candidates by receiving 35.1% of the vote, with Jennifer Schloegel getting the second largest vote share at 32.6%. Ian Baker followed with 32.3%.
Wicker, the incumbent Republican U.S. senator, defeated Democratic challenger Ty Pinkins in unofficial results Tuesday night.
“We need to deter our adversaries abroad,” Wicker said on Tuesday night. “We need to secure the border. I look forward to serving you in the United States Senate for another term.”
A poll worker directs traffic at Brinkley Middle School, where voters cast their ballots instead of Powell Middle School, the former Precinct 29 voting site, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024 in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Wicker resides in Tupelo and has served in the U.S. Senate since late 2007 after first being appointed to fill a vacancy by then-Gov. Haley Barbour. He was elected to the post in 2008. He previously served in the U.S. House and as a state senator.
If the Republican Party takes control of the Senate, Wicker will likely lead the Committee on Armed Services, the committee with jurisdiction over the nation’s military. He would be the first senator from Mississippi to lead the committee since John C. Stennis.
In a speech last week to the state’s business leaders, Wicker encouraged them to vote for Republican candidates on Election Day so that political leaders in Washington can pass new laws to reduce federal taxes, strengthen the nation’s military and reduce the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country.
Wicker defeated Pinkins, a civil rights attorney and a Rolling Fork resident who unsuccessfully ran for Mississippi secretary of state last year.
Burt Mott leaves the G. Chastaine Flynt Memorial Library in Flowood after casting his ballot on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. House members were reelected to another term.
In the 1st Congressional District that comprises most of northeast Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly, a Republican, defeated Democratic opponent Dianne Black.
In the 2nd Congressional District that makes up most of the Delta and west Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Democrat in Washington, defeated Republican challenger Ron Eller.
In the 3rd Congressional District that contains most of central Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Michael Guest was reelected without opposition.
In the 4th Congressional District located in south Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell defeated Democratic opponent Craig Raybon.
Mississppi U.S. Senator Roger Wicker greets supporters at the Westin Hotel Tuesday night after winning reelection to the U.S. Senate. Wicker defeated Democratic candidate Ty Pinkins, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2025. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Polls are open until 7 p.m. on Nov. 5 for the 2024 Mississippi election.
The state’s voters make their picks for presidential, congressional, state judicial and some local races. Live results will automatically update below after polls close at 7 p.m.
Polls in Mississippi will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today as voters make their picks for presidential, congressional, state judicial and some local races.
Voters are reminded to bring a photo identification. This can include a valid Mississippi driver’s license, an identification or employee identification card issued by any government entity of the U.S. or state of Mississippi, a U.S. passport, a military photo ID card, a current student ID card issued by an accredited college or university or a Mississippi voter ID card. For more information on voter ID rules, check here.
Those who do not have a valid ID can vote affidavit, but must return and present a photo ID within five days for their ballot to count. Voters waiting in line as polls close at 7 p.m. will still be allowed to vote. If you vote absentee or affidavit, you can track the status of your ballot here.
The Mississippi secretary of state’s office offers an online resource, My Election Day, where voters can locate or confirm their polling place, view sample ballots and view current office holders. Those with doubts or questions about their precinct locations are urged to contact their local election officials. Contact info for local election officials is also provided on the My Election Day site.
The secretary of state’s office, U.S. attorney’s office and the state Democratic and Republican parties will have observers across the state monitoring elections and responding to complaints.
The secretary of state’s elections division can be contacted at 1-800-829-6786 or ElectionsAnswers@sos.ms.gov.
The U.S. attorney’s office investigates election fraud, intimidation or voting rights issues and can be contacted at 601-973-2826 or 601-973-2855, or complaints can be filed directly with the Department of Justice Civil Rights division at civilrights.justice.gov. Local law enforcement holds primary jurisdiction and serves as a first responder for alleged crimes or emergencies at voting precincts.
The secretary of state’s office also provides some Election Day law reminders:
It is unlawful to campaign for any candidate within 150 feet from any entrance to a polling place, unless on private property.
The polling places should be clear of people for 30 feet from every entrance except for election officials, voters waiting to vote or authorized poll watchers.
Voters are prohibited from taking photos of their marked ballots.
A group of state senators on Monday grappled with how much to slash state taxes or if they should cut them at all, portending a major policy debate at the Capitol for next year’s legislative session.
The Senate Fiscal Policy Study Group solicited testimony from the state government’s leading experts on budget, economic and tax policies to prepare for an almost certain intense debate in January over how much they should trim state taxes while balancing the need to fund government services.
Senate Finance Chairman Josh Harkins, a Republican from Flowood whose committee has jurisdiction over tax policy, told Mississippi Today that he wanted senators to have basic facts in front of them before they help decide next year if Mississippi should cut taxes.
“We’re getting a tax cut the next two years whether we do anything or not,” Harkins said. “I just want to make sure we have all the facts in front of people to understand we have a clear picture of how much revenue we’re bringing in.”
Mississippi is already phasing in a major tax cut. After a raucous debate in 2022, lawmakers agreed to phase in an income tax cut. In two years it will leave Mississippi with a flat 4% tax on income over $10,000, one of the lowest rates in the nation.
However, the top two legislative leaders, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann who oversees the Senate and House Speaker Jason White, have both recently said they want legislators to consider new tax cut policies.
Hosemann, the Republican leader of the Senate, has publicly said he would like to see the state’s grocery tax, the highest of its kind in the nation, reduced, though he hasn’t specified how much of a reduction or how long it would take for the cut to be implemented.
White, a Republican from West, said last week that he would like to see the state’s 4% income tax phased out and have the state’s 7% grocery tax cut in half over time.
“We are hoping to construct a tax system that, yes, prioritizes certain needs in our state, but it also protects and rewards taxpayers,” White said last week.
But it’s difficult to collect accurate data on the state’s grocery tax, and state lawmakers must grapple with a laundry list of spending needs and obligations based on testimony from state agency leaders on Monday.
Mississippi currently has a 7% sales tax, which is applied to groceries. The state collects the tax but remits 18.5% back to cities. For many municipalities, the sales tax is a significant source of revenue.
If state lawmakers want to reduce the grocery tax without impacting cities, they could pass a new law to change the diversion amounts or appropriate enough money to make the municipalities whole.
State Revenue Commissioner Chris Graham said the Mississippi Department of Revenue, the agency in charge of collecting state taxes, does not have a mechanism in place for accurately capturing how much money cities collect in grocery taxes. This is because the tax on groceries is the same as non-grocery items.
However, Graham estimates that the state collects roughly $540 million in taxes from grocery items.
The other problem lawmakers would have in implementing significant tax cuts is a growing list of spending needs in Mississippi, a state with abject poverty, water and sewer and other infrastructure woes and some of the worst health metrics in the nation.
Representatives from the Legislative Budget Office, the group that advises lawmakers on tax and spending policy, told senators that lawmakers will also be faced with rising costs in the public employee retirement system, the Medicaid budget, public education, state employee health insurance, and state infrastructure projects.
State agencies, including the employee retirement system, also requested $751 million more for the coming budget year.
“That’s the billion dollar question, I guess,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, said. “How we’re able to fund basic government services?”
Harkins and Hopson said the committee would likely meet again before the Legislature convenes for its 2025 session on January 7.
A House committee on tax cuts has also been holding hearings, and White in September held a summit on tax policy.
In Mississippi, where there’s already a dearth of 50,000 or more affordable homes for extremely low-income residents, that number could grow in the next five years.
Housing units available under the federal Low Income Tax Credit program could lose their affordability by 2030 — a number estimated nationwide to be 350,000 with 2,917 in Mississippi, alone; 496 in the state already have.
The federal program responsible for most of the nation’s affordable housing is expiring.
The Low Income Housing Tax Credit, introduced as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, provides for developers to buy, build and restore low-income housing units. Under the deal, the housing only needs to stay low-rent for 30 years. Construction began in the early 1990s.
Some LIHTC housing will remain affordable due to other subsidies, nonprofits, state law and individual landlords.
“I think the low-income housing tax credit has done everything that it can to address the need for affordable housing around the state,” said Scott Spivey, executive director of the Mississippi Housing Corporation, a state office that administers the program and works with the state government and those in the affordable housing industry to create and support affordable housing
Spivey supports the proposed Affordable Housing Credit and Improvement Act, a federal bill that would expand upon the low-income housing tax credit in several ways, including giving developers more credit for certain projects for low-income households and changing tenant eligibility rules.
While housing has become a major issue for Americans, getting legislation passed has been challenging. “Everybody knows that housing is an issue, but it gets caught up with everything else…and it kind of gets lost in the shuffle,” said Spivey.
This issue is especially important in Mississippi, where demand for housing is high across all incomes.
“All the market studies that we see that come with the applications tell us that there’s a huge need for affordable housing across the state at all the income bands” said Spivey.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, almost a third of Mississippi renters are extremely low income; 65% of them are severely cost burdened, meaning they spent more than half their income on rent. The majority of these households are seniors, disabled people, single caregivers of young children, people enrolled in school, or other.
Director of Housing Law at the Mississippi Center for Justice, Ashley Richardson said housing problems worsened after Mississippi stopped participating in the federal rental assistance program in 2022.
MCJ’s work on housing includes a statewide eviction hotline, investigating instances of housing discrimination, and more.
Richardson praised the LIHTC program, but echoed Spivey’s concerns. “Even with the affordable housing we do have in Mississippi, we are still at a lack,” she said.
The National Housing Preservation Database estimates Mississippi is short 52,421 affordable and available rental homes for low-income people. The National Low Income Housing Coalition puts the figure at 49,478.
Richardson wants the state to deal with issues like providing more tenant protections and rental assistance. There’s also a need to improve homes that are rundown or in poor condition, and many housing nonprofits are running out of funding.
Spivey said people should talk to their property managers and learn about their rights. MHC’s website has resources for homebuyers and renters.
As the housing crisis goes on, there are options for people struggling to find and keep affordable housing and an effort to take action at the federal and state levels.
Some aspiring low-income homeowners may qualify for Habitat for Humanity, a program that builds homes for families in need. Families who qualify work on the homes alongside volunteers, pay an affordable mortgage and receive financial literacy education.
New applicants must meet the qualifications, including a good debt-income ratio, 125 hours of sweat equity and taking classes on financial literacy, home repairs, and being a good neighbor.
Merrill McKewen, executive director for Habitat for Humanity Mississippi Capital Area, emphasized the importance of housing to individuals and communities.
“There are untold studies that have been done that, you’ve gotta have a safe, decent, affordable place to live. The children are better students, the parents are better employees…it grounds you to a community that you can contribute to and be a part of. It is the American dream, to own a home, which is what we’re all about,” she said.
Mississippians will go to the polls on Tuesday, Nov. 5, to elect federal and state judicial posts and some local offices, such as for election commissioners and school board members.
Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. To find your polling place, use the secretary of state’s locator, or call your local county circuit clerk.
The following is a list of the candidates for federal and judicial posts with brief bios:
President
Kamala Harris, current vice president and Democratic nominee for president. Her running mate is Tim Walz.
Donald Trump, former president and current Republican nominee. His running mate is J.D. Vance.
Robert Kennedy Jr. remains on the ballot in Mississippi even though he has endorsed Trump. His running mate is Nicole Shanahan.
Jill Stein is the Green Party candidate. Her running mate is Rudolph Ware.
Five other candidates will be on the Mississippi ballot for president. For a complete list of presidential candidates, see the sample ballot.
U.S. Senate
Ty Pinkins is the Democratic nominee. He is a Rolling Fork native and attorney, representing, among other clients, those alleging unfair working conditions. He served 21 years in the U.S. Army, including combat stints, other overseas deployment and posts in the White House,
Roger Wicker is the Republican incumbent senator. He resides in Tupelo and has served in the U.S. Senate since late 2007 after first being appointed to fill a vacancy by then-Gov. Haley Barbour. He was elected to the post in 2008. He previously served in the U.S. House and as a state senator. He is an attorney and served in the United States Air Force.
House District 1
Dianne Black is the Democratic nominee. She is a small business owner in Olive Branch in DeSoto County.
Trent Kelly is the Republican incumbent. He was elected to the post in a special election in 2015. He previously served as a district attorney and before then as a prosecuting attorney for the city of Tupelo. He is a major general in the Mississippi Army National Guard.
House District 2
Bennie Thompson is the Democratic incumbent. He was first elected to the post in 1993. Before then, he served as a Hinds County supervisor and as alderman and then as mayor of Bolton.
Ronald Eller is the Republican nominee. He grew up in West Virginia and moved to central Mississippi after retiring from the military. He is a physician assistant and business owner.
House District 3
Michael Guest is the Republican incumbent and is unopposed.
House District 4
Mike Ezell is the Republican incumbent first being elected in 2022. He previously served as Jackson County sheriff.
Craig Raybon is the Democratic nominee. Raybon is from Gulfport and began a nonprofit “focused on helping out the community as a whole.”
Central District Supreme Court
Jenifer Branning currently serves as a member of the state Senate from Neshoba County.
Byron Carter is a Hinds County attorney and previously served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Armis Hawkins.
James Kitchens is the incumbent. He has served on the state’s highest court since 2008.
Ceola James previously served on the Court of Appeals.
Abby Gale Robinson is a Jackson attorney. She previously was a commercial builder.
Southern District Supreme Court
Dawn Beam is the incumbent, having been first appointed in 2016 by then-Gov. Phil Bryant and later winning election to the post. She is a former chancellor for the Hattiesburg area.
David Sullivan is an attorney in Harrison County and has been a municipal judge in D’Iberville since 2019. His father, Michael, previously served on the state Supreme Court.
Northern District Supreme Court seats
Robert Chamberlin of DeSoto County is unopposed.
James Maxwell of Lafayette County is unopposed.
Court of Appeals 5th District seat
Ian Baker is an assistant district attorney in Harrison County.
Jennifer Schloegel is a Chancery Court judge for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties.
In 2016, Jarrius Adams’ absentee ballot never arrived at his apartment in Oxford, so the then-19-year-old at the University of Mississippi was left with one option to vote: Skip all his classes and drive four hours home to his polling place in Hattiesburg.
Faced with a similar situation, the reality is most college students would decide not to vote, said Adams, who now works with the nonprofit Mississippi Votes.
“For some students, it’s just as simple as eating three times a day now that you have no supervision,” he said. “To add voting for the first time?”
It can be hard to cast a ballot in Mississippi, where state voting lawsconsistently rank as among the strictest in the nation.
But for the state’s tens of thousands of college students — many of whom are voting for the first time while also trying to stay on top of homework, classes, chores and having a social life — the barriers to the ballot box faced by all Mississippi voters pose an even greater challenge.
Mississippi is one of just three states without early voting. This means college students who choose to vote in person most likely have just one day to get to the polls, which are not always on campus. According to a list provided by the Secretary of State’s office, three of the eight public universities in Mississippi lack an on-campus polling location for this election.
When college students turn 18 in Mississippi, they are not automatically registered to vote if they have a driver’s license, a law on the books in 23 other states.There’s no same-day voter registration, which voting experts say can pose an issue for college students whose addresses, and therefore precincts, change more often than other voters. And Mississippi doesn’t have online voter registration for new applicants.
Mississippi “pretty much has all the things that make it hard to vote,” said Jennifer McAndrew, the senior director of strategic communications for Tisch College at Tufts University, which houses the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement.
Nevertheless, colleges and students who have been working all semester long to encourage their peers to vote say that young Mississippians pursuing higher education are motivated to turn out this Election Day.
“Our young Mississippians are the future of our state,” Secretary of State Michael Watson, who has visited colleges across the state to talk to students about voting, said in a statement. “It is important for them to educate themselves not just on the voting process, but also the policies and issues affecting the state and nation..”
At Ole Miss this semester, the Center for Community Engagement has registered more students to vote before the deadline in an election year than it ever has before: About 350 students, according to William Teer, the program director for student leadership programs and financial well-being.
Now, it’s just a matter of getting these students to the polls.
The UM Voting Ambassadors registered students in front of the student union during National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 17, 2024. Credit: Courtesy the University of Mississippi
“Everyone hears about how young people and college students in particular don’t vote in huge numbers for whatever reason,” said Marshall Pendes, a senior math and economics major who serves as a voting ambassador at Ole Miss. “I get a chance as a student to try and change that.”
Pendes cited a study that Tufts’ National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement conducted of student voting at Ole Miss, which found that about 15,000 students — more than 75% of campus — were registered to vote during the last presidential election.
That’s in part because of the efforts of voting ambassadors like Pendes. In his four years at the university, Pendes estimated he’s helped register more than 600 students. He’s helped students complete the Mississippi Secretary of State’s paper registration application all across campus, at fraternities and sororities, before and after class, during student government meetings, in the Circle and at meetings for all kinds of political clubs.
But not so much on in the Grove.
“During games, people aren’t really interested in doing paperwork,” Pendes said.
The goal is to educate students on how, where and why it’s important to vote, Pendes said, whether that’s in-person in the county where they attend school or at home through an absentee ballot.
“One of the great things about voting as a college student is you have so many choices,” he said. “Every person’s situation is different.”
Even though college students qualify for an absentee ballot in Mississippi, students say it’s far more common for their peers to register to vote in their college’s county.
“It’s more common for students to register on campus,” said Avantavis TyMon, an elementary education major at Alcorn State University who is also a Mississippi Votes’ Democracy in Action fellow. “It’s easier, and it’s more accessible … especially for the out-of-state students who don’t have cars.”
Alcorn State University is one of five public universities that will host on-campus precincts this year, along with Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State University.
Though Delta State University does not have an on-campus voting location, there is a precinct across the street.
On Election Day, TyMon said he and other student leaders plan to canvass the dorms and ask students if they want to join a “stroll to the polls” event, which will involve a short walk to the on-campus precinct.
“It’s a little bit of a walk from where students live,” TyMon said, adding that in previous years, “we would meet up and all walk together.”
Mississippi’s absentee ballot process, which experts describe as onerous, may be another reason college students register to vote in-person in greater numbers.
“It is an unbelievable barrier for college students who don’t live in Mississippi or are voting absentee in Mississippi,” McAndrews said.
First, a voter must request an absentee ballot application from their circuit clerk’s office, according to a step-by-step guide from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office. Once they receive the application in the mail, the voter must have it witnessed by a notary, unless they are disabled. When a voter gets a ballot, the next step is finding another notary to watch the voter fill it out.
“You can do your taxes in one day,” Adams said. In Mississippi, “you cannot vote by mail in one day.”
Even some notaries think Mississippi’s absentee ballot law could be eased.
Bill Anderson, the vice president of government affairs at the National Notary Association, said that, of the handful of states that involve notaries in the process, Mississippi’s law is the strictest.
“You’d expect us to be supportive of states that allow or create a role for notaries in absentee ballots,”Anderson said. “We think this is a good idea. … These states, including Mississippi, want there to be a layer of security that is absent for voters voting absentee.”
Nonetheless, Anderson said he is hoping to work with Mississippi lawmakers next year on some issues he sees with what he called the “non-notarial functions” required by the state’s law.
For instance, Mississippi’s law requires notaries to sign the back of the envelope containing the voters’ ballot, something Anderson said is not expressly permitted by the notary laws of his home state in California. And Mississippi doesn’t oblige notaries to affix their seal to the envelope, which Anderson said other states require notaries to do.
“You can just imagine the poor voter,” Anderson said. “They’re out here, and the California notary is trying to find their state law and doesn’t want to get in trouble with the Secretary of State of California and says look … I’d love to do this for you, but I can’t.”
For his part, Pendes said he thinks students who want to vote absentee are motivated to find notaries, which can be relatively easy to do on a college campus.
“In my experience, people usually aren’t defeated by the notarization part,” he said.
At Mississippi State, the student government association and the Division of Student Affairs held an event called “Notary Day” last week. More than 70 students had their absentee ballots notarized, said Carson McFatridge, the student association president.
“When I think of a notary, I think of someone at the bank,” she said. “That can be a challenge just not knowing who has the capability to do that … so it was really, really cool to be able to see people like our dean of students volunteer an hour of his time to sit out there and help people.”
McAndrew said it’s important for colleges to make voting as a student as simple as possible, because even the perception that voting is complicated is itself a barrier.
“There’s so much out there about strict voter ID laws, it becomes this ghost barrier on top of the actual barrier,” McAndrew said.
“Anything we can do not only to reduce the complexity but to reduce the intimidation and anxiety factor is really important,” she added.
To that end, many professors have canceled classes to give students the day off to vote, and universities across the state are offering rides to the polls. At Ole Miss, buses will leave from the Walk of Champions and behind Ole Miss Bike Shop from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.
This does more than help students without cars, Pendes said.
“The other thing to consider is that parking spaces on our campus are extremely hard to come by,” he said. “Do you want to move your car and lose your parking space to try to go vote? Because that isn’t necessarily something that’s always guaranteed to you, especially in commuter spaces.”
This semester, the Center for Community Engagement was also successful in finding a solution to an issue that has troubled student voters for years at Ole Miss, which is that residence halls and Greek Life houses are not considered acceptable mailing addresses at which to register.
Teer, the program director, said he worked with the Lafayette County Circuit Clerk’s office to establish the center as a mailing address for students who live on campus.
“We’ve had students coming in daily because they’ve received an email from us that their voter information cards had arrived,” Teer said.
Every Thursday, students at Alcorn State held a voter registration event at the campus chapel. TyMon also helped organize a voter registration block party that featured food trucks. These efforts resulted in more than 400 students registering to vote.
TyMon said he thinks student leaders have an important role to play in setting an example for their peers.
“When they see that we’re serious, they get serious,” he said.
That’s why A’Davion Bush, a sophomore political science major at Ole Miss, is going to drive home to Indianola not just to vote, but to volunteer at the polls. The Mississippi Votes’ Democracy in Action fellow said he’s going to post about his plan on social media so his friends who are still in high school will be inspired to vote when they turn 18.
“The older population is not doing anything to influence young people in my county,” he said.
McFatridge, the student body president at Mississippi State, said she recently registered a student to vote who had just become a U.S. citizen, which reminded her that while voting is a right, it’s also a privilege not had by everyone around the world.
Not voting in the U.S. is “kind of like looking a gift horse in the mouth,” McFatridge said.
“It’s a silly phrase,” she added, “but I truly believe that when given the opportunity to share your own thoughts and beliefs, I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”
An Arkansan, McFatridge had intended to vote early in her hometown of Searcy during fall break, but a family emergency prevented that.
It’s too late for her to order an absentee ballot, so now she’s driving home to vote before Election Day, 4.5 hours away.
