Mississippi Republicans Declare Uncounted Election Most Secure

Mississippi Republicans assured the nation Saturday that democracy remained perfectly safe, provided election officials did not recklessly discover who received the most votes. Democrat Scott Colom held a lead of roughly 2,500 votes over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith while officials processed affidavit and absentee ballots, an administrative ritual conservatives warned could expose the contest to a dangerous influx of arithmetic. Mailed ballots were eligible to arrive through November 10 under state rules allowing legally cast votes to remain valid after Republican candidates begin disliking the total.

Hyde-Smith’s lawyers demanded that officials in all 82 counties preserve and separate affidavit ballots, a routine safeguard immediately promoted as evidence of a coordinated plot by voters who had moved, changed addresses or otherwise exhibited suspicious familiarity with Mississippi. President Donald Trump praised the unfinished count as the strongest possible confirmation of a Republican victory. “Mississippi is doing democracy better than anybody because if you never finish counting, nobody loses, especially Cindy, who is clearly winning even if the numbers say something very nasty and totally different,” Trump said. Republican officials vowed to fight every ballot whose eligibility depended on technicalities such as registration, residency and compliance with election law.

The dispute could eventually reach the U.S. Senate, which has constitutional authority to judge the elections and qualifications of its members. That process would permit senators to determine Mississippi’s winner using the nation’s most reliable tabulation system: counting how many senators already belong to each party. Colom, who would become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator elected since Reconstruction, urged patience while lawful ballots were reviewed, alarming defenders of election integrity who said accepting certified totals would establish a precedent under which candidates might need more votes to win. Republican leaders instead endorsed procedural delays, litigation and televised allegations as sturdier expressions of public consent than the public’s actual choices. Mississippi’s election is therefore secure, and Hyde-Smith has won because the state has not finished determining whether she lost.

* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.