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How do you feel about the 24-team college football playoff we now know is coming in the 2027-28 season?

Like it? Hate it? Or do you, as I, just hold your nose and accept it?

Ole Miss fans probably would prefer the expansion to 24 teams from the current 12 to have happened this season. With a 6-3 record and currently ranked No. 19 in the college football playoff rankings, the Rebels have practically no chance to make the 12-team field. But they would still be right in the middle of a 24-team playoffs race.

This probably won’t be a popular take in Oxford, but I would argue a team that loses by 24 points to Florida and by 35 at home to Georgia doesn’t deserve to be in a tournament to determine the national champion. And I would argue that expanding the playoff to 24 teams means having a tournament in which three-fourths of the teams have no chance whatsoever of winning the championship.

Expansion proponents will argue the more the merrier. They foresee a football tournament that produces the magic of March Madness in basketball. The fly in that ointment is that the 24-team football playoffs will not include the sort of teams that provide so much of the basketball magic.

A team such as Middle Tennessee State will not have the opportunity of stunning Michigan State in the football playoffs, as happened in basketball. (Thank you for that, Kermit Davis Jr.)

VCU, even if it had a football team, would never get a chance to shock North Carolina as it did in the NCAA Basketball Tournament last March.

Instead, the 24-team football playoffs will make room for more fourth, fifth and sixth place teams from the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten.

Let’s take the current playoff rankings. Four three-loss teams from the SEC would make the cut: South Carolina, Ole Miss, LSU and Missouri. That’s Missouri, which lost to Ole Miss by 28 and also lost at Mississippi State. I guess you might believe the Missouri Tigers belong in a playoff for the national championship. I would argue they belong in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl or New Year’s Eve game in Florida.

I just don’t believe much is gained from expanding to 24 teams. And much is lost, starting with the Southeastern Conference Championship Game, which has far out-paced the TV ratings of the first-round games in the current 12-team playoffs format.

The 2026 SEC Championship Game will be the last, which means that only one Mississippi team in history participated. Congratulations to the 1998 Mississippi State Bulldogs who led Tennessee in the fourth quarter before falling 24-14. (I still hear State fans complain about the officiating.)

Usually, when decisions like this one to expand the playoffs are made, the deciding factor is money. That’s not the case with the playoff expansion. In this case, you can’t just follow the money. The increased TV payoff for doubling playoffs participation is virtually negated by losing the revenue that the conference championship games provided.

That being the case, you would think that the decision to expand was made because of popular demand. Wrong. In fact, the opposite may be the case.

Just this past August, Nielsen Sports conducted a fan survey to determine the popularity of expanding the playoffs: 63% percent of people who described themselves as “avid fans” were against the expansion. What’s more, 76% of “casual fans” also were against expansion. Given the choice of six size options – from no playoffs at all the way up to the 24-team expansion, fewer than 10% of respondents opted for the 24-team field.

Nevertheless, here we go…

At Innovate Mississippi’s annual conference, 10 Mississippi startups competed to win a $15,000 grant.

The companies showcased products that included magnetic resonance imaging software, a basketball artificial intelligence training app and a new type of military drone. 

Innovate Mississippi is a nonprofit working to cultivate the state’s startup, innovation and tech economy. The annual conference included panels on investing, networking and two “pitch competitions.” 

A key part of Innovate’s work includes these pitch competitions, where founders try to attract funding by presenting their business idea to investors. The organization also invests directly in companies.

“We want to make sure the rainbow continues, and we can keep investing and building in Mississippi for future generations,” said Lindsey Benefield, the fund manager for Invest Mississippi.

“I want our state leaders to not forget about entrepreneurs,” said Jim Lowery, chief market strategist at mTrade, an Oxford-based software company. “It is important that we support our companies both big and small. You never know when the next small company will become big.”

Throughout the conference, founders pulled investors aside to talk about their companies and try to raise more capital.

All of the companies participating in Wednesday’s competition are trying to develop new products and aggressively grow their business. 

Julien Bourgeois, the CEO of Automatic AI, a first of its kind app that uses artificial intelligence to help athletes train, said that the company wants to expand its business from the current 8,000 users to over 25,000 in the next few years.

Omnibus, an integrated platform to manage and track school buses in real time, is operating in eight Mississippi school districts but hopes to expand throughout the Southeast. 

Each founder had three minutes to pitch his or her company to a panel of investors and two minutes to answer questions. The time crunch forced founders to get their pitch across quickly, and a few were cut short by the timer going off.

LOA Carbon was founded in New York but relocated to Mississippi this year. When the company’s founders were looking to relocate and expand their manufacturing capacity, Mississippi wasn’t on their radar. 

“We thought we were likely to land in either Texas or Alabama, and we didn’t really even pay attention to Mississippi,” said Ryan Shearman, the company’s CEO. 

The company liked the research and development at Mississippi’s universities, the state’s manufacturing sector, labor market and programs such as Innovate.

“We wanted to look into what state support programs would be available,” Shearman said. “Between Innovate Mississippi, Invest Mississippi, the Mississippi Development Authority, the overall package of different things we would have a shot on goal for was most attractive here, comparable to other states.”

The decision paid off. LOA Carbon won the $15,000 grant.

Local election officials in Mississippi spent more than a week counting votes in a hard-fought U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom.

The Associated Press called Colom as the winner on Wednesday, eight days after people voted. Colom opened up a narrow lead on election night, Nov. 3. The vote count remained close over the following days, and his lead grew to more than 4,600 as officials examined provisional ballots.

A victory by Colom is historic in a state that did everything it could, for generations, to block Black people from voting. He will become the first Black senator in Mississippi since Reconstruction – and the first elected here by popular vote, because senators during the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction were chosen by state lawmakers. 

This isn’t the first election that has extended into overtime. The state has a history of messy contests that took a while to resolve.

Party like it’s 1999

The 1999 governor’s race dragged on until January 2000. Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice couldn’t seek a third term, and the top candidates were Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Parker and Democratic Lt. Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.

Musgrove was known for his get-up-early-and-stay-late work ethic, and he campaigned the same way. Parker? Not so much. He was at a golf course during the crucial final days before the election.

Two other candidates were on the ballot. The Reform Party’s Jerry Ladner and independent Helen Perkins ran low-budget campaigns but collected enough votes to create chaos.

Back then, winning a statewide race was a multi-step process. In addition to receiving a majority of the popular vote, a candidate had to prevail in a majority of the 122 state House districts – essentially the equivalent of the Electoral College.

Musgrove received 49.6% of the popular vote to Parker’s 48.5%. Ladner got just over 1% and Perkins got just under that amount.

Weirdly, Parker and Musgrove split the House districts right down the middle, winning 61 each. 

Those requirements threw the race to the House of Representatives, where members had no obligation to vote as their districts did. The two months between Election Day 1999 and the opening day of the 2000 legislative session saw some of the most intense politicking of the season as Parker and Musgrove courted House members.

Democrats controlled the House by a wide margin. But, the party label was more a decorative item than a declaration of ideals for many lawmakers, so the Democrat was not a shoo-in for governor.

Musgrove ended up prevailing in an 86-36 vote that was split largely along party lines. Notably, a Republican lawmaker from DeSoto County, Valeria Robertson, cast her vote for Parker, even though Musgrove carried her House district.

Mississippi eliminated the complicated process of electing statewide officials in 2020, switching to a runoff if no candidate receives a majority. The 2023 election cycle was the first time that system was in place, though no runoffs were needed.

Gunn vs. Barbour, 2003

Republican Philip Gunn became one of the most powerful figures in state government during three terms as the speaker of the Mississippi House. But he had a rocky time even winning his first House race.

Gunn, of Clinton, challenged Republican Rep. Jep Barbour of Yazoo City in the 2003 Republican primary, the same year that Jep’s uncle, Republican Haley Barbour, unseated Musgrove in the governor’s race.

Jep Barbour was initially declared the winner of the House primary, but Gunn challenged the results and a judge ordered a new round of voting in two precincts. Gunn won the primary and the general election, starting the first of his five terms in the House. He chose not to seek reelection in 2023, and he is now among the Republicans in the 2027 governor’s race.

Tea party vs. the establishment, 2014

State Sen. Chris McDaniel of Jones County came close to unseating longtime U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in a three-person Republican primary in 2014. It was a race that dragged on well past when the votes were counted because McDaniel refused to concede, even going to court.

Cochran surprised even some of his ardent supporters by announcing in late 2013 that he would seek reelection rather than retire. After a career of easy victories, he conducted what can generously be called a lackadaisical campaign in which he often appeared unfocused.

McDaniel started strong, but his momentum sputtered after some of his supporters were caught breaking into the nursing home room of Cochran’s wife, who had dementia, and taking photos of her. The images briefly appeared in a blog post implying that Cochran was stepping out with another woman while his wife was incapacitated. Cochran’s camp said he had not engaged in any improper relationship.

McDaniel aligned himself with tea party folks who wanted to upend the Republican establishment. Cochran served six years in the U.S. House before winning the Senate seat in 1978, and he epitomized the establishment, bringing billions of dollars to Mississippi as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

McDaniel led the first round of Republican primary voting with 49.5% of the vote to Cochran’s 49%. A candidate who spent little, Thomas Carey, received the remaining sliver of votes. 

In the weeks between the primary and the runoff, Cochran actively sought support from Black voters. McDaniel protested that people who usually support Democrats should not vote in the Republican runoff. But Mississippi voters don’t register by party. The only people prohibited from voting in a Republican runoff are those who voted in the Democratic primary that cycle.

Cochran won the Republican nomination, but McDaniel asked the state Republican Party to overturn Cochran’s victory on a claim that Democrats had improperly crossed over to vote in the runoff. The party did not act on his appeal, so McDaniel challenged his loss in court. A judge dismissed that case, saying McDaniel waited too long to file it.

Cochran defeated Democratic former U.S. Rep. Travis Childers in the 2014 general election. After serving less than half of the six-year term, Cochran retired in early 2018 and Republican Gov. Phil Bryant chose Hyde-Smith, the state agriculture commissioner, to go to the Senate. 

Drawing straws but coming up short

About 9,000 people voted in a 2015 race for a Mississippi House seat, and it ended in a tie between 20-year Democratic incumbent Bo Eaton of Taylorsville and Republican challenger Mark Tullos, an attorney from Raleigh. The tiebreaker? A drawing of straws.

Republican Delbert Hosemann, who was secretary of state, held a ceremony in a state office. Each candidate reached into a bag and chose a silver-plated business card case engraved with the word “Mississippi” – one containing a green plastic straw, the other containing a red one.

Eaton, a farmer, won by drawing the green straw, and he declared: “There’s always happiness in a good crop year.”

But it was a temporary victory. 

Tullos filed an appeal, which was considered by a committee in the Republican-majority House. That committee tossed out five affidavit ballots that were in dispute. With that decision, Tullos was sworn into the House, where he still serves in the Republican supermajority.

Mississippi Today Editor-in-Chief Emily Wagster Pettus has covered state politics since 1994. She worked for The Clarion-Ledger and The Associated Press before joining Mississippi Today.

Update, 11/11/2026: This article has been updated to show that Scott Colom has been declared the winner of the Senate race.

Sophia Paffenroth, women’s health reporter for Mississippi Today, has been selected for the Association of Health Care Journalists’ International Health Study Fellowship. 

Through this international fellowship, Paffenroth will compare and contrast reproductive health policies and practices in Mississippi with those in the United Kingdom to better understand how access and affordability shape infant mortality rates in both places. 

Paffenroth will build on her existing reporting. In August 2025, State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney declared Mississippi’s infant mortality rate a public health emergency at 9.7 deaths for every 1,000 live births, higher than the national average. Research has shown that Black babies in Mississippi are more than twice as likely to die in infancy than white babies. More than a year later, experts say the state should do more to improve outcomes for its children, including focusing on equity. 

“I’m so excited by the opportunity to provide Mississippi with a meaningful international comparison of maternity care as stakeholders in the state navigate a maternal-infant health crisis,” Paffenroth said. 

Through her reporting in the United Kingdom, Paffenroth said she hopes to learn more about the country’s “rich history of community midwifery care” and how it has boosted outcomes for pregnant people and newborns from households across all income levels while also lowering costs.

“We are thrilled to see Sophia take her reporting on this important issue to the next level,” said Laura Santhanam, health editor at Mississippi Today. “The insights and data she returns with will help our audiences make more well-informed decisions on matters of life and death.”

Launched in 2018, this fellowship is sponsored by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research foundation. The program has sent health journalists from across the United States abroad to ask questions – and seek answers to – some of this nation’s most demanding health challenges. 

In this latest cohort with three other U.S. journalists, Paffenroth will travel to New York to gain insights into reading international health statistics, navigating a new country as a journalist and understanding systems of care and patient concerns. Then, Paffenroth will travel to the United Kingdom to conduct her reporting.

A large solar power project that would take up close to 6,000 acres near Bolton can move forward, the Mississippi Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday, over two years after Hinds County officials initially greenlit the facility.

“Soul City Solar,” an idea brought to the area by Virginia-based company Apex Clean Energy, drew pushback in 2024 from nearby residents who were worried about what a massive solar facility would do to the area’s natural ecosystem. The company agreed to lease land for the project from Gaddis Farms.

Despite the loud protests, the Hinds County Board of Supervisors approved the application with a 3-2 vote in June, 2024.

One of the opposing residents, Allison Lauderdale, appealed the decision to the Hinds County Circuit Court, arguing that the Board of Supervisors didn’t offer a written finding with its decision and that it should have required further environmental assessment. Lauderdale raised nearly $4,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to back her legal effort.

But the local court ruled against her, finding that the board did what was required of it. The Court of Appeals, after taking the case last year, affirmed the lower court’s decision on Tuesday.

In its opinion, the court pointed to measures Soul City agreed to after hearing the community’s objections. Those included offering to repair nearby roads, using trees as a visual screen around the facility and putting up “fencing” and “corridors” to allow wildlife to move through the project area.

“Soul City voluntarily accepted conditions that concerned the community. The fact that these conditions were taken on voluntarily, rather than imposed by the Board, does not negate the fact that they exist,” Appeals Court Judge Amy Lassitter St. Pé wrote in the decision.

Advertising the project in 2024, Apex Clean Energy said the new facility would produce 396 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 95,000 homes. That production would make it the largest solar producing facility in the state, officials at the time told Mississippi Today.

Officials in Hinds County finished processing long-awaited affidavit ballots on Wednesday in the historic Mississippi U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom. 

The race was called by The Associated Press hours after Hinds finished its tally, based on incomplete and unofficial votes, but with 99% of precincts statewide reporting.

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

READ MORE: Colom wins: Mississippi picks another senator

Election workers in Hinds counted 67 outstanding mail-in ballots and processed 817 accepted affidavits. Votes were still outstanding elsewhere, but the total from the large county likely proved pivotal . 

Voters cast 2,426 affidavits in Hinds County. Of those, the election commission rejected 1,609 and accepted 817. Colom’s lead has increased to over 4,400 votes over Hyde-Smith with 99% of the vote counted.

Overall, Colom won the county with 63,302 votes to Hyde-Smith’s 14,925. Independent Ty Pinkins got 997 votes in the county.

Hinds County Circuit Clerk Zack Wallace said he urged election commissioners to certify the results on Wednesday, but they wanted to wait until Thursday.

“I think they probably just want to double-check everything and not rush the certification and just make sure all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted,” Wallace said.

The nation has been watching Mississippi, and Hinds County in particular, as the Magnolia State is one of two states with its Senate race not called more than a week after Election Day. Poll watchers, attorneys and media hovered again Wednesday as the Hinds Election Commission finalized the vote tally.

As Hinds County Election Commissioner Yvonne Horton and her colleagues counted the last remaining ballots on Wednesday, Horton said the process had gone according to plan, despite the prolonged period for uploading final results. Some observers have long criticized Hinds County for delays in reporting results, and videos of workers counting ballots by hand have swirled on social media all week, prompting frustration.

“They are ignorant about our process. They just don’t know,” Horton said. “And I don’t have time to tell them.”

The sacrifices made by America’s military members were highlighted during a Veterans Day ceremony at the Two Mississippi Museums.

The event, conducted Tuesday outside of Jackson’s Two Mississippi Museums, honored Mississippi’s service members, veterans and their families. It featured a musical performance from the 41st Star Army Band and remarks from military leaders, including Maj. Gen. Bobby M. Ginn Jr., the adjutant general of Mississippi.

“As we gather on Veterans Day, we are reminded that behind every name engraved on a memorial is a life that mattered, a family that loved them and a story that deserves to be told,” he said.

Ginn’s speech told the story of Meridian native and Army National Guardsmen Sgt. Robert S. Pugh, a combat medic who died during the Iraq War. After an improvised explosive device left him and Sgt. First Class Ellis Martin with severe injuries, Pugh directed the soldiers around him to give Martin life-saving treatment.

Ellis survived, but Pugh died of his injuries. Pugh was posthumously awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart and Mississippi Medal of Valor. The Mississippi National Guard Readiness Center in Morton bears his name.

“In what would become the final moments of his own life, Sgt. Pugh’s concern was not for himself. It was for the soldier beside him,” said Ginn. “That is the very definition of selfless service.”

Ginn conducted the wreath-laying ceremony with Pugh’s mother, Wilma Allen, followed by a memorial volley.

Mississippi Air National Guard state Command Chief Master Sgt. Kevin Myers said that stories like Pugh’s are, “a somber reminder that once we put the uniform on, it is always the possibility that we will be called into harm and dangers’ way, and for that, some of us pay the ultimate sacrifice,” he said.

Myers considers Veterans Day a time for him to reflect on his 30-year career. He said he is honored to serve alongside multiple generations of service members.

“For those who make the choice to join our services and join our formations, I take it as a privilege to serve with them, because they are the younger generation,” he said.

Despite outperforming most of the nation in education, Mississippi ranks last on overall child well-being, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s latest KIDS COUNT Data Book, particularly in health and poverty. 

During a “Families Count in the Deep South” event hosted by Mississippi Today on Tuesday, the newsroom’s staff joined leaders from health, education and community engagement across the state to highlight gains, build momentum for a way forward and bring data from the report to life.

Voting rights affect children’s well-being

“‘Families count’ must mean something beyond counting families in a report. It must mean their lives count when decisions are made,” said Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson, addressing about two dozen people in the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Auditorium in Jackson. 

Summers, the event’s keynote speaker, called on her colleagues in the Legislature to prioritize funding childcare, maternal health and education. 

She also gave a nod to problems that have arisen during the latest midterm elections, and said the chaos highlights the need for easier online voter registration, early voting and universal suffrage. Summers said voting rights are intertwined with children’s well-being because they determine who is given the power to make decisions that will affect future generations. 

Mississippi ranks 50th in health and 49th in economic well-being, but the state has secured 16th place in education – what many have dubbed “the Mississippi miracle.” Nationwide, Mississippi scored second-to-last in on issues of family and community, such as teen pregnancy, single-parent families, households lacking college degrees and high poverty areas. 

Summers urged stakeholders to bring the same urgency they brought to childhood literacy to alleviating childhood poverty. 

“Before we finish the story of Mississippi’s so-called miracle, we must make room for the children whose lives still demand a different ending,” Summers said. 

Families face food insecurity

During a panel that explored food insecurity across the state, speakers highlighted the fact that 1 in 4 children face hunger. In Jefferson County School District, where Adrian Hammitte serves as superintendent, that’s 1 in 3 children. Hammitte said a cafeteria worker in his district keeps four jobs to earn enough money to put food on the family table. One of his district’s best performing teachers, he said, holds perfect attendance but works three jobs to make ends meet. 

The adults who can’t afford to put food on the table raise children who are hungry, don’t perform well in school and repeat the cycle of poverty, Hammitte said. He mentioned a little girl in his district who ran up to him during a Friday afternoon dismissal, hugged his leg and said, “‘Can I go home with you this weekend? Because I know I’m not gonna eat.’” 

Last summer, for the third year in a row, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves opted out of a state-federal partnership that would have given summer food benefits to roughly 320,000 Mississippi children who rely on free meals during the school year. In refusing those dollars, Reeves has called the summer food program “attempts to expand the welfare state.”  

Many Mississippians lack health insurance

His rejection of social safety net programs also extends to healthcare policy, including Medicaid expansion. Mississippi remains one of 10 states not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving tens of thousands of working Mississippians without access to health insurance. 

Healthcare panelists spoke about the steep participation drop in marketplace insurance over the last year. In December 2025, enhanced subsidies expired that made insurance more affordable for more than 22 million Americans. Between February 2025 and February 2026, active enrollment in the plans fell by about 70,000 Mississippians. Panelists warned that will create a greater pressure on charitable organizations compelled to cover those gaps and will lead to sicker patients and higher costs for hospitals and the state. 

Khaylah Scott, program manager for the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program, said she often hears people argue that those enhanced subsidies were part of a COVID-era policy.  But she said the policy worked, nearly tripling the number of enrollees, and it shouldn’t be forgotten after the pandemic. 

“When you make healthcare affordable for people, they’ll buy in,” Scott said. “I think that our state is safer and healthier when more people are covered.”

Multiple phone calls. A car pool to the Madison County Circuit Clerk’s Office, where Zemaryiah Johnson had cast an affidavit ballot. And then instructions that she had to go somewhere else entirely, in an adjoining Mississippi county.

All that to ensure that Johnson, an 18-year-old freshman at the historically Black Tougaloo College, would have her vote counted — for Scott Colom, the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate.

“It’s like going back in time,” Johnson said.

The long, slow count in the tight race between Colom and the Republican incumbent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, reached a critical deadline on Tuesday, the last day that affidavit ballots could be fixed — a process known as curing — and that mail-in ballots postmarked on Election Day could arrive. Recent days have highlighted the problems and frustrations that Mississippi’s strict election laws can cause in such a tight contest.

Organizers, community leaders and lawyers spent Tuesday scrambling to ensure the final tranche of ballots were in order. By the end of the day, Colom, who would be the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since Reconstruction, led Hyde-Smith by just over 2,600 votes, but an unknown number of affidavit ballots and 2,578 still uncounted absentee-by-mail ballots could still determine the winner.

“Votes should be counted, and that’s all we’re concentrating on today,” Hyde-Smith told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

She added: “We’re just looking for the conclusion of our race.”

In Jackson, Colom and his allies have been calling on Mississippi to expand its voting process, by among other things, setting up an early voting period that many other states share. He also questioned whether “there may be some disadvantages to our potential to lead in D.C.,” given that he couldn’t join new lawmakers in orientation on Capitol Hill.

Michael Watson, Mississippi’s secretary of state, had “created chaos” with the affidavit rules and should apologize for the delay, Colom said on Tuesday, during a visit to the Hinds County Sheriff’s Office.

Watson said that as of 5 p.m. Monday more than 15,500 affidavit ballots had been processed. Just over three-quarters of them had been accepted, he said. He did not say how many ballots were left.

Mississippi and Alaska are the only states yet to declare a winner in their Senate contests, but Mississippi is drawing closer. State law does not allow for a recount of votes in a statewide election, nor will there be a runoff.

The tussles over affidavit ballots have also drawn attention to a decision from July 2025, when Watson’s office announced a partnership where data from Experian, the credit reporting agency, would be used as part of the agency’s maintenance of the state’s voter rolls.

Under the partnership, some registered voters identified as having a new address were labeled “inactive,” meaning they had to fill out an affidavit ballot if they showed up to vote. On Election Day, some voters — though it was unclear how many — found themselves mistakenly marked as having moved or inactive.

Scott Anderson, an Experian spokesman, said the agency hadn’t worked with Mississippi since early last year, and that the sharing of “supplemental address information” at the time “was not designed or intended to validate voter records.”

Watson defended the affidavit ballot process in a statement on social media last week as “a safety net for errors” during voter roll maintenance that would result in “more accurate voter rolls” and “decrease opportunities for voter fraud.”

Over the last week, affidavit ballots have been processed by hand, as election commissioners checked to see whether each voter was in the system, or if someone had arrived to “cure” a ballot with proper identification. That has created considerable friction.

“Seeing people genuinely have to call every day and have to go up there every day and exhaust their finances with gas and their energy to do things like this — it’s almost like they want people to get tired,” Johnson said.

The process proved especially confounding for many Mississippi college students, including at Tougaloo, which straddles Hinds and Madison counties, two of the state’s largest. The geographic positioning had sowed confusion, since some students lived in one county but tried to vote in the other.

Terry Rogers II, 21, a senior studying political science, drove students in a college van between the two counties, as he wrestled with each student’s particular instructions on where to go to check a ballot.

“Think about how many others did not have the opportunity and have advocates like that,” Rogers said. 

Lyric Wise, 18, a freshman at Tougaloo, said elections officials were sending students around in circles. Wise has already made two trips to the Madison County Circuit Clerk and was set to board Rogers’s shuttle to the Hinds County Circuit Clerk on Tuesday afternoon.

Cortorian Keeton, 22, a Tougaloo senior who managed to resolve his ballot problem, said he had never seen friends and peers so engaged in the political process: “A lot of people mad, a lot of people happy, a lot of people want Mississippi to stay the same and a lot of people want Mississippi to be different,” he said.

But even some organizers who lamented the hurdles for voters basked in the attention of the nation and the pride they said they felt in Mississippi’s civic engagement.

“People are actually looking at Mississippi right now,” said Jada Barnes, the field director for Mississippi Votes Action Fund. Over wings and pizza in the organization’s Jackson office, volunteers spent Monday evening calling voters, checking to see if they had voted using an affidavit ballot or fielding questions about the process.

The state’s voters, she said, “really beat the odds.”

One of those voters, Heather Holland, 28, said that since she got married in 2022, she had cast her ballot several times in Jackson County, a Republican stronghold on the Gulf Coast. But last Tuesday, when she showed up to vote, her registration turned up under her maiden name, requiring her to file an affidavit ballot.

“It could make a difference,” Holland, a Democrat, said on Tuesday. She reached out to volunteers to make sure that her vote had been counted.

On Tougaloo’s campus on Tuesday, Rogers printed off fliers with a QR code that directed students to a state website that allows people to check the status of their ballots. With about 40 fliers in hand, Rogers joined other students who had gathered steps away from the Woodworth Chapel, a haven of the Civil Rights movement where leaders like Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer had spoken, and opened the driver-side door for the final trip on Tuesday.

His next destination: Jackson State University, another historically Black college where students had reported problems filling out affidavit ballots. More ballots needed curing.

All eyes remained fixated on the Hinds County Election Commission Tuesday, hoping that outstanding ballots from the area could determine the outcome of a nail-biter U.S. Senate race between Democrat Scott Colom and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. 

The Associated Press late Tuesday afternoon reported that Colom led Hyde-Smith by 2,604 votes with around 97% of the vote counted, but it still has not called the race.   

Tuesday at 5 p.m. was the deadline for voters who had to cast affidavit ballots on Election Day because of issues with providing valid photo identification to return to their local circuit clerks’ offices and present a valid form of ID to “cure” their ballot. 

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

It was also the deadline for local election officials to receive late-arriving, mail-in absentee ballots that were postmarked by Election Day. 

Counties have until Friday to transmit their official election results to Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office, but officials in Hinds County, the state’s largest county and a Democratic stronghold, are expected to upload the results of their outstanding affidavit ballots on Wednesday, an attorney for the county told Mississippi Today. 

Hyde-Smith and Colom each on Tuesday continued to say they have a path to victory. 

Hyde-Smith, notorious for refusing to answer reporters’ questions in Capitol hallways, returned to Washington on Monday and initially declined to answer questions. On Tuesday she briefly told the media she was “feeling very optimistic” about winning reelection but refused to elaborate on the math behind her optimism. 

Colom, at an event thanking Hinds County Sheriff’s Department deputies, said he believed that once Hinds County reports the remainder of its ballots, it will likely be enough for him to be declared the winner. 

“The reality is she can’t point to a direction where she has a possibility to win, right?” Colom said of Hyde-Smith. “If she thinks she truly has the ability to win, explain how.” 

As election commissioners across the state continued to process the thousands of remaining affidavit ballots by hand, scores of election attorneys and a coalition of community and advocacy organizations that work on voting rights monitored the process.

Max Meyers, an attorney with the NAACP, said at an event on Monday night that he had not found any major issues with how election commissioners were processing the ballots and that they were continuing to “do their jobs.”

“I haven’t had to send any angry letters, which has been great,” Meyers said. “I haven’t had to set foot in a courtroom, which is lovely.” 

After county officials certify the election results, it’s possible that a campaign or political party could file litigation to contest the results or ask for a recount. 

Mike Hurst, chairman of the Mississippi GOP and general counsel to the Republican National Committee, previously said at a press conference that the party will “fight like hell” to ensure every legal ballot cast is counted and is prepared to “avail ourselves of every legal resource” available.

Colom said that Hyde-Smith needs to “accept the will of the voters,” but he’s also prepared to litigate.  

It’s unclear how litigation would play out. Mississippi has no recount law, and there is no clear process spelled out in state law for someone to challenge the results of a general election for a state office.