Throughout the month of October, Mississippi Today is hosting some of Mississippi’s most celebrated authors in conversation with Mississippi Today editors and journalists.
We kicked off the Mississippi Writers on Mississippi Politics series with a conversation between Mississippi author Kiese Laymon and Managing Editor Kayleigh Skinner on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
Kiese Laymon is the author of three books, including the reissued How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (November 2020). Laymon is the Hubert McAlexander Chair of English at the University of Mississippi.
Laymon published “The Front Row” on October 6, 2020. You can read it here.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s first 2020 attack of Mike Espy foreshadows a contentious two-and-a-half weeks before the Nov. 3 Senate election.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican incumbent running for re-election on Nov. 3, released an attack ad of Democratic challenger Mike Espy this week, foreshadowing a contentious two-and-a-half weeks before the election.
Espy, meanwhile, released two new ads this week touting his desire to reach across the aisle and “deliver for Mississippi.”
The attack ad from Hyde-Smith follows her campaign’s messaging this week that Espy is “desperate” and “is still losing.” Earlier this cycle, Espy released two attacks ads on Hyde-Smith.
“In the election for Senate, you have a clear choice,” a narrator in the Hyde-Smith ad says. “Mike Espy voted to raise your taxes but refused to pay his on time. Cindy Hyde-Smith voted to cut your taxes and grow our economy. Mike Espy voted to give taxpayer funded healthcare to illegal aliens. Cindy Hyde-Smith voted to help rural hospitals with more funding for healthcare. Mike Espy worked as a lobbyist for a foreign dictator charged with war crimes. Cindy Hyde-Smith supports America’s military and law enforcement.”
“Mississippi is a great place to raise a family, but I’m worried our kids will have to leave here to get better jobs,” Eichelberger says, looking directly into the camera. “We need someone in the U.S. Senate who knows how to promote this state. Mike Espy has been delivering for Mississippi his whole life. Cindy Hyde-Smith is costing us jobs, talking about public hangings, refusing to support changing the state flag. It’s not who we are today.”
Earlier in the week, Espy released an ad in which he touts working across the aisle.
“I was Mississippi’s first Black congressman since Reconstruction, and I’ve always fought to deliver for our state,” Espy says in the ad that first aired on Sunday. “I’ve passed laws with Republicans, like Thad Cochran and President Reagan, to bring good jobs here. And as Secretary of Agriculture, I opened markets for Mississippi all around the world.”
Espy continued: “I approve this message because I do what’s best for Mississippi regardless of party, and I know how to get our fair share in Washington.”
The Hyde-Smith and Espy campaigns plan to flood Mississippi airwaves with ads between now and Election Day. The latest campaign finance reports, which will show how much money each campaign has to spend in the waning days of the election, are due to be submitted by the end of the day Thursday.
In the beginning, it was simple curiosity. Over time, that casual curiosity grew into a deep friendship and dogged determination to keep a promise for a dying wish.
Such is the unlikely journey of Suzi Altman of Brandon, on a mission to preserve Margaret’s Grocery in Vicksburg.
Altman’s friendship with Rev. H.D. Dennis and his wife Margaret Dennis began in 2001. The reverend promised Margaret a castle if she married him. She did, and he began construction in 1979, using reclaimed and recycled materials for the build.
Before he died in 2009, the reverend told Altman he was a prisoner of war in World War II and the Nazis taught him how to lay brick. Architects and contractors from around the country have marveled at the castle’s staying power. Only advanced age and illness brought his never-ending project to an end. The ravages of time and thieves have severely damaged the property. Dennis asked Altman to promise she would save the castle he built for his lady love. Altman has established the Mississippi Folk Art Foundation to preserve and protect the site.
“It’s not about me,” Altman said. “It’s about preserving fantastic folk art and a part of Mississippi’s culture.”
“We’re getting our votes in early and getting it done,” said Irish Simmons, with her brother Tyrone Mayes, at the Hinds County Courthouse on Tuesday. “Don’t know what this weather is going to be like,” said Simmons.
Inside an at-risk voter’s journey to ensure safe voting conditions in her Delta town
Jackie Lucas is a lifelong voter who had concerns about voting in her small Mound Bayou precinct during the pandemic. When she tried to work with elected officials to change it, she encountered systemic dysfunction at every level.
MOUND BAYOU — Jackie Lucas has never missed a vote. The state of Mississippi has never made it so difficult for her to do so. That is, until the pandemic hit.
Lucas, a Black senior citizen with diabetes, did not feel safe voting in her small, enclosed voting place at Mound Bayou’s city hall. Her town is known for its civic engagement; it’s not unusual for folks to sit shoulder-to-shoulder while waiting to cast a vote.
According to precinct voter population estimates based on the 2010 census, Mound Bayou’s voting precinct serves 1,965 people, which is about 70% higher than the state’s average precinct.
“We just don’t have space there to do any kind of distancing,” Lucas said.
She also didn’t feel confident that the president wouldn’t try to undermine her absentee vote.
The most logical solution she saw was to work with her elected officials to move the voting location from the small city hall to the spacious high school gym less than half a mile away.
She eventually prevailed, but not without jumping through multiple hoops and first hearing from every elected official she asked that there was nothing they could do.
About 64 days before the election, Lucas reached out to Shelia Perry, her county election commissioner, to discuss changing Mound Bayou’s voting location, but said she never heard back. Lucas then heard from the Mound Bayou mayor that Perry had reached out and said nothing could be done.
Indeed, Perry told Mississippi Today that she reached out to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office for guidance, but says she was told that voting locations must be changed 90 days before an election.
In all, Lucas sought help from her mayor, election commissioner, the board attorney for the election commissioners and her state representative.
While some of them genuinely tried to help her come up with safer, alternative voting solutions, none of them knew that there was actually no law binding polling places to be changed by a certain amount of time before an election.
Even Gov. Tate Reeves, when asked for clarity about what the process was to change a voting location, did not know the answer.
“I’ll be honest with you, I’m not an expert on election law,” Reeves said. “If it is 90 days, and this was a major issue in a county, we’ve had the coronavirus here in the county for a while now. We knew that elections were coming up in November.”
This was something Lucas heard while trying to get her voting location changed — not just that she was out of luck, but that she should have thought of this sooner.
“I asked Mrs. Lucas why we didn’t look at this before 90 days, and she was just very candid in saying she just didn’t think about it before recently,” said state Rep. Abe Hudson, D-Shelby. “And I totally understand, but I’m glad she brought the conversation up.”
Hudson did try to help come up with solutions to mitigate virus spread on Election Day, like securing tents and fans so the election could be moved outside. He also sent grant opportunities to Delta-based circuit clerks to help cover the cost of that.
“I will be honest, I give (Lucas) all the credit in the world for bringing it up,” Hudson said.
Voting rights advocate and law student Teresa Jones said it’s the responsibility of elected officials to ensure safe voting on behalf of their constituents.
Contributed by Teresa Jones
Teresa Jones
“The responsibility shouldn’t lie upon the constituent to make sure she’s able to vote. The polling location for her, not being actually safe — that’s a necessity that should have been planned for at the state level and at the county level,” Jones said.
Jones continued: “Obviously, it seems like this is something that’s very important to her and she’s going out of her way to make it so that she is able to do it and do it safely. There’s no telling how many other people maybe are feeling the exact same way, and they don’t know to call their elections commissioner. They don’t know to call their state (representative) because a lot of times the average voter don’t even know who those people are.”
Born and raised in Mound Bayou, Lucas grew up watching her mother work on elections and serve as an alderman for 20 years. She remembers the KKK’s violent threats against the first Black Bolivar County supervisor voted into office, and how he fled for safety to Mound Bayou. And there were the stories she was brought up on about what her grandfather went through to vote as a Black Mississippian during the Jim Crow era.
“My grandfather used to speak about when the white people in Bolivar County didn’t want the Black people to vote, (the Black people) would have to wait in long lines,” Lucas said. “They (the white people) would give them water and food contaminated with a laxative and they’d all have to leave the polls. The trickery of voter suppression, it lives on. It’s just different ways to try to keep Black people from voting.”
She could have voted absentee or voted early because of her age or found times during Election Day that were likely to be less crowded. The issue reached beyond just her, though. With the coronavirus disproportionately killing Black people, she has now lost track of the number of people she knows who died from it.
In Bolivar County, where she lives, COVID-19 has infected 1,993 people — and 61% of them were Black. So forcing people to vote in a space that the CDC said would lend itself to virus transmission felt like another instance where Black people must risk their lives to vote and white leaders don’t care, she said.
“I know the current president is not going to look at this and say, ‘Oh yes, they need to have a bigger space (to vote).’ But the people of Mound Bayou should be able to vote and they ought to be safe voting,” she said.
And, of course, not casting a vote was never an option for her.
“You can’t protest and say, ‘I’m not going to vote, I’m not going there to risk my life.’ That’s what is desired,” Lucas said.
Ultimately, it was determined that either miscommunication, misunderstanding or misinformation transpired between the Mississippi secretary of state’s office and Perry.
“I am not sure who the election commissioner from Bolivar County spoke with, but there is no hard deadline to change a polling place,” said Kendra James, assistant secretary of state for communications and publications, in an email to Mississippi Today. “Again, we recommend making all polling place changes no later than 60 days before the election so there is sufficient time to notify the affected voters, but there is not a hard deadline.”
James also said that the secretary of state’s office had asked the counties to reach out to their polling locations to make sure they were still available for Election Day and suitable for voting under current conditions.
“If the county cannot use the polling place or has a location better suitable for current conditions, such as a facility that allows more social distancing or a facility that allows one door for entry and exit, the county was encouraged to change the location,” James said. “Through our (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) CARES Grant funding, we have also offered to reimburse counties for purchasing/renting reasonably priced tents for open-air voting and one table per precinct to allow for voting outside.”
Still, there has been confusion at every level of government about this, and state leadership has not elected to make voting during a pandemic easier for anyone.
Mississippi, which already had some of the most restrictive early voting laws in the nation, did less than most other states to make it easier to vote early in person or by mail to avoid crowded precincts on Election Day and to avoid possible exposure to the coronavirus.
Even before the pandemic, most states allowed no-excuse early voting.
But in Mississippi, only those who will be away from their homes on Election Day, the elderly and disabled are allowed to vote early. In the 2020 session, the Legislature did add a provision to allow those who are in a physician-imposed quarantine because of the coronavirus and those who are caretakers of those impacted by the coronavirus to vote early. But that provision has been interpreted narrowly by the state Supreme Court.
Exactly 30 days before the Nov. 3 election, Lucas got word that the county would work with her to change her polling place. As it turns out, county supervisors (and only county supervisors) have the authority to change a voting location any time before the election, as long as it’s due to an emergency.
During an Oct. 3 Bolivar County Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Olanda Morton, who represents Mound Bayou, asked the board attorney to help get the location changed. The same attorney who represents the board of supervisors also represents the election commission board.
“I just would like to move ahead and get with the board (of elections in Bolivar County) and see what can be done,” Morton said.
Now that Lucas knows the polling location in Mound Bayou will be changed and voting can be done more safely, she’s turned her attention to making sure as many people as possible get out to vote.
“I am just elated,” she said. “We won’t have to endure that.”
Bobby Harrison and Alex Rozier contributed to this report.
Our 2020 Voter Guide launched in August 2020, and so we gave readers the opportunity to sit down with our seasoned political team who previewed the playing field and answered questions from our readers about the November 3 election.
In this one-hour program, Mississippi Today managing editor Kayleigh Skinner introduced readers to senior political reporters Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender, who gave readers a look at what they could expect in the months ahead before the election. The panel also answered questions from the crowd.
The Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday, June 30, 2020.
One legislative vacancy remains to be filled after four runoff special elections for House and Senate seats were completed Tuesday.
Six legislative vacancies, caused by resignations, have occurred this year — an unusually high number in the first year of a new four-year term, and only one year after all 174 legislative posts were up for election.
In Tuesday’s runoff election:
Senate District 15: Businessman Bart Williamson defeated Mississippi State University professor Joyce Meek Yates in a seat left open by the resignation of Gary Jackson. The district consists of portions of Choctaw, Oktibbeha and Webster counties.
Senate District 30: Attorney Jason Barrett defeated banker Bill Sones in a district that consists of portions of four counties but is centered around Brookhaven in southwest Mississippi. Barrett will replace Sally Doty, who resigned from the seat after being appointed as executive director of the Public Utilities staff by Gov. Tate Reeves. Besides Lincoln County, the district also consists of portions of Copiah, Lawrence, and Walthall counties.
House District 37: Former Lowndes County School Superintendent Lynn Wright upended business owner David Chism, who is the cousin of Gary Chism, who held the post until his resignation earlier this year. The district consist of portions of Clay, Oktibbeha and Lowndes counties.
House District 66: De’Keither Stamps, a member of the Jackson City Council, upended former school teacher Robert C. “Bob” Lee Jr. in the Hinds County district. Stamps will replace Jarvis Dortch, who stepped down to become director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Earlier this year Sanderson Farms executive Robin Robinson won a special election in District 88 to replace Ramona Blackledge. The district consists of portions of Jones and Jasper counties.
On Nov. 3, Matthew Conely, David Wayne Morgan and Joseph “Bubba” Tubb will be on the ballot for the District 87 post in Forrest and Lamar counties. That post became vacant when Billy Andrews stepped down early this summer.
If no candidate receives a majority of the vote in the special election, a runoff will be held between the top two vote-getters.
In January, when the new session begins, the two presiding officers, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in the Senate, will have to juggle committee assignments because of the resignations and election of new members. The plum committee post will be Senate Judiciary A, left vacant by Doty’s resignation.
Candidates run without party labels in legislative special elections. But thus far it is not likely that the results will change the partisan makeup of the House and the Senate. All of the resignations were Republican, with the exception of Dortch. Stamps is expected to serve as a Democrat, replacing Dortch. And the other winning candidates this week are expected to serve as Republicans.
Mike Espy said incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is disrespecting Mississippians by offering few open-to-the-public appearances.
Democratic challenger Mike Espy said incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is hiding from and disrespecting Mississippians by refusing to debate him and running a low-profile campaign with few open-to-the-public appearances.
“She’s doing the same thing the rest of the country often does — ignoring Mississippi,” Espy said in a Wednesday press conference before he hits the campaign trail for the final weeks before the Nov. 3 election. “… She’s running a lazy campaign, taking voters for granted. You don’t do that in Mississippi.”
Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. On social media, she posted: “You have a choice this election, so I encourage you to dig into both of our records…” with a link to one of her campaign ads.
Espy said: “If you can’t come stand before the public or answer questions from the media, then you don’t deserve this seat … Unlike Sen. Hyde-Smith, when you call on me I will respond. When you ask me a question, I will answer it. I’m not going to run away from you … Cindy Hyde-Smith has not held one town-hall meeting in two years.”
Espy said health care is the most important issue of the race, and he said Hyde-Smith should stand before voters and answer questions about her platform. He said she supports repeal of the federal Affordable Care Act “with no plan to replace it in the middle of a pandemic.” Espy also said Hyde-Smith “voted five times to undermine protections for pre-existing conditions.”
Hyde-Smith, in a rematch with Espy for a seat that most prognosticators consider safely Republican in one of the reddest states in the country, has done little public campaigning and has declined invitations to debate. The Mississippi race is one of few Senate contests across the country where candidates are not debating.
Espy criticized Hyde-Smith for comments she made recently on how it was good for voters that Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris were debating to give the public their opinions and to show how they respond under pressure.
Many politicos have surmised that Hyde-Smith — prone to gaffes on the public campaign trail — believes she has a substantial lead in the race, can ride President Donald Trump’s coattails with Mississippi voters, and is otherwise laying low and trying not to give Espy’s campaign any platform.
Espy has accepted two debate requests, from WJTV and from WLBT, and on Wednesday said he is still willing to debate in the final weeks of the campaign.
Hyde-Smith had recently indicated she would like to debate Espy, if her schedule would allow it. But in comments to WJTV last week, Hyde-Smith said: “We have 27 days left. The last thing I’m worried about is a debate. With such stark differences, why would so much emphasis be put on a debate? … I don’t think a lot of minds would be changed.”
On Wednesday, Espy said: “That’s why you debate someone, if there are stark differences.”
A Jackson Public Schools student attends class on his laptop from a classroom at the Capitol Street campus of the Boys and Girls Club on Sept. 21, 2020. Normally an afterschool program, the Club began opening at 7 a.m. and facilitating distance learning for the children of working families after schools closed their doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new normal: How Mississippi students are adjusting to a virtual school year
CLARKSDALE — On an early August morning,Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School teacher HannahFisher looked directly into her computer camera and asked her first graders to hold up their pencils. Every student who raised their pencil finished their assignment: spelling two and four letter words.
In a normal setting, Fisher would be in her classroom teaching students. Now, as a global pandemic has upended schooling and the way people teach, she’s fixated on students in small squares on Zoom. Some students were visible on their screens. A few others only displayed their names.
A few minutes later, Fisher reminded students to move on to write their words. In the midst of that, she stopped to address a student’s behavior.
“Sit up,” she said to the student. “Remember we’re not (lying) on the carpet. We’re writing right now. …I’m going to turn off your video and it’ll come on in 30 seconds. OK? I’m gonna get you to fix it in that time.”
Fisher’s first graders are not alone in struggling to stay engaged, communicate and navigate online platforms. Additionally, connectivity and internet access is a hindrance to getting kids online. The Mississippi Department of Education is currently rolling out a plan to deliver nearly 400,000 devices to students. Districts are supposed to receive them no later than Nov. 20. The department said 12 districts are receiving their devices this week, though many are still waiting.
Students and parents say they fear the negative impact the delay will have on student learning.
“(Schools) want to make sure that kids are safe, accounted for, (and) engaged in their learning,” said Brennan Parton, policy and advocacy director at Data Quality Campaign. “They’re really having to rethink and reimagine and get creative about how we do that during this unprecedented time … the stakes are higher.”
Nearly three months ago, the state department required local school districts to submit their reopening plans detailing how they will resume — whether virtual, in-person or a mixture of the two.
The Clarksdale Municipal School District settled on virtual learning for the first half of the semester. This changed when school officials learned many students did not have internet access or devices. So for the first two weeks of school, students received instructional packets. Currently, 21% of the student population uses instructional packets only and 57% is virtual only, according to data from the Clarksdale Municipal district.
Students said the instructional packets cause confusion and leave them unmotivated because they don’t provide the opportunity for teacher-student interaction the way a traditional classroom set up does.
Marchellos Scott, Jr.
Marchellos Scott, Jr., a Clarksdale High School senior, sits in his room completing one of his instructional packets for class.
“I’ve never taken human anatomy so I don’t know what I’m doing, meaning more than likely if I don’t find the answers online, I will fail doing the packets,” Marchellos Scott, Jr., a Clarksdale High School senior, said. “The teachers said they’re just holding on, doing what they’re being told and everything keeps changing so they are confused as well.”
Scott is enrolled in virtual only but is required to complete instructional packets for certain classes, he said. He said he thinks his grades will suffer because he is not learning as much.
For other students, online learning halts much needed support services.
Griffin Threatt, an eighth grader at Clinton Junior High School, said he missed the face-to-face interaction with his teachers. Griffin is on a hybrid schedule, but a traditional classroom environment keeps him “more focused while I’m learning,” he said.
His mother, Amanda Threatt, praised his growth over the past year, but worries he won’t be able to keep up. She added he hasn’t received as much support as a student with special needs.
“I went ahead and got him a math tutor because he’s in Algebra this year just to keep him on task,” she said. “(One of his teachers) said it’s really hard to help the kids with IEPs (Individualized Education Plans) because we really don’t have the support right now… He feels like he’s learning but not at the rate he’s used to.”
Some parents said virtual learning created opportunities to spend quality time they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Before the pandemic, Jackson native Brittany Watson Cain worked eight-hour days. She arrived at home around 10:00 p.m. every night, so she rarely saw her four children. When schools closed in March, so did the doors at her job. She started working from home.
“By the time you get home, you’re exhausted, they’re tired, so it wasn’t always the best scenario,” Watson Cain said. “It’s harder for some people because they don’t have that. They really don’t have childcare, you know? So I do understand.”
District officials said technology allows students to explore and use applications on their own even though it poses some challenges. Clarksdale Collegiate students had devices before the pandemic, but now students have devices at home. This means students don’t have in-person teacher support to assist with devices. Despite this, students are still able to navigate programs — like first graders submitting Google Forms, said Amanda Johnson, executive director of Clarksdale Collegiate.
Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today
Amanda Johnson, executive director of Clarksdale Collegiate, checks the daily morning chat in her office.
“We’ve been pushed to think about how we use technology and just teaching our kids and getting them engaged,” Johnson said. “It’s allowing technology to help us solve problems and help us support our kids more. There’s no reason why that should go away.”
Parton, the Data Quality Campgain director, says state education agencies and lawmakers should be forward-thinking about understanding how the pandemic has disrupted students’ learning progress. This magnifies learning inequities even more for students who need more support and resources.
“Even as they’re trying to meet students’ acute needs — internet access, laptops, engagement in class — states also need to be planful about the kinds of things that they’re going to need to do not only now, but the rest of the school year,” Parton said. “There’s going to be a lot of academic slide for students – more than you normally lose over the course of the summer.”
Carey Wright, state superintendent of Mississippi public schools, encourages teachers to accelerate learning as a way to address learning loss, or academic slide. For example, if a student is in fifth grade, the teacher should teach fifth grade standards.
“Our standards are designed in a way that they build on each other and also spiral,” she told Mississippi Today. “If you keep drilling and killing on some of these skills, kids are never going to get it. Start with grade-level standards and accelerate their learning. That approach is one that has been validated by others in the field.”
Remote learning is a learning curve for educators and families, but consistent communication and proper resources can alleviate concerns and access barriers for students.
“Until everyone gets on the same page, it’s only going to get worse,” Scott, the Clarksdale student, said. “It’s definitely gonna be hard on students, but I think we should still put together plans in case something like this happens again.”
Othia McMillian fills out her ballot at the Hinds County Courthouse on Oct. 13, 2020.
While Mississippi’s early voting laws are the most restrictive in the nation this year, it appears those eligible to vote absentee in the 2020 election may be doing so in record numbers.
As of Sunday, more than three weeks before Election Day and the deadline to vote absentee, 58,796 Mississippians had cast absentee ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office, and 91,474 absentee ballots had been requested. In the 2016 presidential election, a total of 102,915 Mississippians voted absentee.
Circuit clerks in several highly populated counties told Mississippi Today that absentee voting appeared higher than ever in 2020, a year featuring a presidential election and the closely contested U.S. Senate race between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy.
Typically, high absentee voting numbers portend high in-person voter turnout on election day.
“It’s extremely heavy,” Harrison County Circuit Clerk Connie Ladner said of early voters in the most populous county on the Gulf Coast. “We started on Sept. 21 with a line of people, and it hasn’t stopped since. I’ve been through a lot of presidential elections, and I’ve never seen an absentee turnout like this.”
Ladner said that as of Tuesday, her county had received 8,398 absentee votes, compared to 5,379 total for the 45-day absentee voting period in the 2016 presidential election.
Voters have also stood in long lines outside the circuit clerk’s office in Hinds County, the most populous county in the state and a Democratic stronghold.
Hinds County Circuit Clerk Zach Wallace told Mississippi Today about 5,000 residents there had already voted absentee. In the 2016 presidential election, Hinds County received 5,309 absentee votes.
Early voting has been among the hottest political issues of 2020 as many voters express safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mississippi is the only state in the nation that doesn’t provide all registered voters a way to vote early without having to risk COVID-19 exposure at the polls, according to a report by the Democracy Initiative.
To make accommodations for the pandemic, Mississippi lawmakers expanded early voting earlier this year only to those who are in a physician-ordered quarantine or are the caretaker for someone in quarantine. Lawsuits have been filed to try to expand the early voting opportunities in Mississippi, but they have had not been successful thus far.
Even before the pandemic, Mississippi had some of the most restrictive early voting laws in the nation. Only people who are going to be away from their home area on Election Day, those over the age of 65 and people with disabilities are allowed to vote absentee, either in person or by mail.
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“We’re getting our votes in early and getting it done,” said Irish Simmons, with her brother Tyrone Mayes, at the Hinds County Courthouse on Oct. 13, 2020.
State law, however, does not mandate that people wanting to vote early because they are going to be away from their home on Election Day provide proof of their travel plans.
“I tell them if they have an ID, they can vote,” said Union County Circuit Clerk Phyllis Stanford.
“We tell them they have to comply for absentee voting with a valid reason,” said Ladner, the Harrison County circuit clerk. “We refer them to the county website, where we list the reasons, and they call us back and tell us their reason.”
Ladner said voters are basically on the honor system for supplying a reason, but “they’re signing the application under penalty of perjury.”
State law does prevent circuit clerks from sending a mail-in ballot to someone because they say they will be away from home on Election Day. Typically, the circuit clerk would tell that person to drop by their office before Election Day and vote.
Mail-in ballots are reserved for people who are residents and registered voters of the state who are in college away from home, might be working or living for whatever reason for a period of time out of state. In that situation, both the ballot and the ballot application would have to be notarized.
People with a temporary or permanent disability and their caretakers in some instances can receive a mail-in ballot. People over age 65 can also request a mail-in ballot or vote early in person. There are other, smaller categories of early voters, such as people whose jobs would prevent them from voting on Election Day, and U.S. House and Senate members and their staffs.
Ladner said she believes interest in the election, more than the COVID-19 pandemic, is driving the absentee turnout this year.
“I think some may have to do with (the pandemic), but I just think it’s this election, from what we’ve seen and listening to the people coming in,” Ladner said. “We have people who it’s their first time to vote, coming in to vote absentee … With the over 65 crowd, yes, that would be because of COVID-19, but we have a lot of students, lot of people that work out of town, and a great turnout from military.”
Ladner said that of the 8,398 Harrison County absentee ballots so far, 5,749 have been cast in person, and the rest are mail-in. She said her office is sending out about 200-300 mail in ballots a day. Mail in ballots must be postmarked by election day on Nov. 3 to be counted.
Ladner said that recently, a man came in and voted absentee on his 102nd birthday.
In Union County in Northeast Mississippi, 484 people had voted absentee as of Tuesday compared to about 500 for the entire early voting period in 2016.
Sparsely populated Quitman County in the Mississippi Delta may be one of the few counties not experiencing a rush of early voters.
“Compared to other (presidential election years), it’s been a crawl,” Quitman County Circuit Clerk Brenda A. Wiggs said. “We have less than 200 right now – probably around 175 – and we usually get around 900.
“They were telling us to expect more than ever this year – we were figuring around 1,300, but there’s no way we’ll do that at this pace,” Wiggs continued. “I have no idea as to why, other than there aren’t any local elections, and you don’t have the ballot shoppers going around or calling people.”
Wiggs said she’s not aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is having any impact on absentee voting, but noted, “a lot of the people that normally come in (and absentee vote) are not coming in yet.”
Wiggs said most absentee voters do so in person at the clerk’s office because of the difficulty of getting a mail-in ballot notarized.
Wiggs said she provides absentee ballots to anyone who “has a legitimate, lawful reason,” although she said it’s hard to verify whether a reason is true.
“Of course, they can lie to me – believe me, they lie like a dog all the time — but we’ve not had many come in that I questioned at all. Ones that have come in have had legitimate reasons.”
Wiggs said one man requested a ballot because of COVID-19, and she told him that was not a valid excuse unless a doctor had diagnosed him with it. But she said the man was over 65, “so he had a legitimate reason anyway.”
