What Hyde-Smith’s Affidavit Ballot Demand Means for Alcorn County Election Officials

By Jon Myers

CORINTH, Miss. — A demand letter from Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s campaign counsel landed with election officials in all 82 Mississippi counties on Thursday, including Alcorn County — and it asks local officials to confirm by 5 p.m. today that every affidavit ballot from the November 3 general election is separated, secured and preserved.

The letter, dated November 5, 2026, comes from the law firm Lex Politica, counsel for Cindy Hyde-Smith for U.S. Senate. It was sent by electronic mail and public release to county election commissioners and circuit clerks statewide.

Here is what it asks of local officials:

Keep affidavit ballots apart. Affidavit ballots and their original envelopes must be maintained as a distinct group, separate from regular and absentee ballots — including accepted, rejected, unresolved and cured affidavit ballots.

Document every ballot’s disposition. For each affidavit ballot, officials are asked to record whether it was accepted or rejected, its unresolved status, the basis for the determination and any timely cure, including the date and time each cure document is received. The required information must also be entered in the Statewide Elections Management System, including the reasons ballots were issued and the numbers counted and not counted.

Preserve the paper trail. The letter lists the records to be retained: affidavit envelopes, separate receipt books, eligibility-review and cure records, pollbooks and electronic pollbook data, Statewide Elections Management System entries and audit logs, tabulator tapes and memory devices, resolution-board and duplication records, election commission minutes, communications with the Secretary of State, video recordings of ballot storage areas, disposition records and records documenting transfer, access and custody. Counties are directed not to overwrite, purge or reformat any electronic data, and to maintain security whenever materials are transported, reviewed, opened, counted or resealed.

The deadline is today. Each county is asked to confirm receipt and advise the campaign’s Hannah Streitman by 5:00 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, November 5, whether the requested safeguards are in place. If any are not, the county is asked to identify the outstanding measures and the anticipated time for implementation. Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson was copied on the letter.

The measures are to remain in place through completion of the canvass, certification and any ballot-box examination, election contest, runoff or other authorized post-election activity connected with the November 3 general election. Federal law separately requires covered federal-election records to be retained and preserved for 22 months from the date of the election.

The letter states that implementation “must not delay lawful tabulation, prevent the counting of any legally cast ballot, or compromise ballot secrecy.” It makes no allegation of fraud or any specific irregularity in any county.

The demand comes as the U.S. Senate race remains too close to call. The latest Associated Press figures from Wednesday evening showed Democrat Scott Colom leading Hyde-Smith by just over 1,100 votes out of nearly 949,000 cast statewide. The Colom campaign has estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 affidavit ballots remain outstanding across Mississippi — a campaign estimate, not an official count.

Affidavit ballots are Mississippi’s version of provisional ballots, cast when a voter’s name is not on the rolls or the voter lacks an acceptable photo ID. Each one is reviewed after Election Day to determine whether it may lawfully be counted, and not every affidavit ballot counts. In 2022, Mississippi voters cast 7,612 affidavit ballots, and officials counted 5,710 of them, according to the Associated Press.

Voters who cast an affidavit ballot because they lacked photo ID have until 5 p.m. Tuesday, November 10, to show an acceptable ID at their circuit clerk’s office or complete an affidavit of religious objection. Counties must certify their results by November 13, and the Secretary of State is scheduled to declare the results on December 3.