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Hinds County election officials say they sent wrong voter form to ballot-printing company 

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Hinds County election officials say they sent wrong voter form to ballot-printing company 

election commissioners acknowledged in a public meeting on Monday that they sent the wrong document to the company that printed its ballots, resulting in several polling places not enough ballots for voters on Nov. 7.

The commission, all of whom are elected Democrats, answered questions from a coalition of on Monday about what went wrong during the statewide election and how those mistakes could be prevented in future elections. Each of the commissioners present at the meeting on Monday took responsibility for the mistake.

“It was a complete human error,” District 2 Commissioner RaToya Gilmer McGee said. “I hate that the citizens of Hinds County experienced it.”

During Mississippi’s Nov. 7 general election, several Hinds County voting precincts ran out of ballots throughout the day. The county is majority Black, Mississippi‘s largest county and a Democratic Party stronghold.

People waited in line for hours to vote as local attempted to replenish ballots and deliver them to polling places. It’s unclear how many people left without voting or decided not to travel to polling precincts because of the confusion from the shortages.

READ MOREHinds County ballot shortages cause legal mess on Election Day

law dictates that county election commissioners supply enough ballots to each polling precinct. The commissioners told the coalition and the public at Monday’s meeting that their mistake in sending the wrong documents mostly impacted “split precincts” in the county.

Split precincts exist when several political boundaries share a single polling place. Different types of ballots must be on hand at the polling precinct whenever there’s a split precinct.

Before each election, the Hinds County Election Commission accesses statewide voter data to determine how many ballots should be distributed, but it sent the wrong voter data to the company it contracted with to print the ballots. 

According to several commissioners, there are two types of polling precinct reports: a BP-008 and a BP-009. The BP-008 form discloses how many voters are registered at each precinct. The BP-009 shows how many different types of ballots are needed at each precinct.

Commissioner McGee said the commission sent the BP-008 form to the printing company, not the BP-009 form. When the commission submitted the wrong form, it caused the company to print an inadequate number of ballots for the split precincts.

While the commission acknowledged its mistake caused mass confusion during a competitive statewide election, McGee said better training from the Secretary of State’s office could have prevented the issue.

“The training needs to be different,” McGee said. “As an incoming professional woman, I feel like it was not a great training.”

Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office trains election commissioners in each of the state’s 82 counties. Watson told Mississippi in a statement that his office is available to answer questions and will “gladly spend time training those who need additional .”

into the 2023 election, all 82 counties received the same training and resources from our office,” Watson said. “No other county experienced the issues we saw in Hinds County.”

Statewide officials have already certified the results of the Nov. 7 election, but Hinds County must conduct an election on Nov. 5, 2024, for a U.S. Senate and the presidential election, which typically attract many voters. 

Gov. Tate Reeves also called for a special election in Hinds County in November 2024 for voters to elect a Hinds County Court judge, a local election that could involve split precincts. 

District 4 Commissioner Yvonne Horton told reporters after the meeting that she believes the commission can learn from its prior mistakes and conduct the 2024 general election without widespread ballot issues.

However, Horton was vague on what concrete steps the commission was planning to take to prevent the ballot printing error or similar errors from in the future.

When asked if the commission, for example, planned to implement an accountability system for someone to review the data the commission sent to a future printing company, Horton offered a conflicting answer.

“No one has said they are going to do that, but I can assure you we are going to do that,” Horton said of an accountability system.

The commission’s next regular meeting will occur next month after a new slate of commissioners are sworn in for a new four-year term.

READ MOREJudge extends Hinds County precinct hours after numerous ballot problems

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1875

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-02 07:00:00

Nov. 2, 1875

Pictured here are U.S. Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, left, with six Black members of the U.S. House, Ben J.S. Turner of Alabama, Josiah T. Walls of Florida, Jefferson H. Long of Georgia, and Robert C. De Large, Joseph H. Rainy and R. Brown Elliot, all of South Carolina. Credit: Library of

The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from , resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the

A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state. 

Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton. 

The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan. 

John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: “It was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.” 

A federal grand jury concluded: “Fraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today’s NewsMatch Campaign is Here: Support Journalism that Strengthens Mississippi

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mississippitoday.org – Mary Margaret White – 2024-11-01 12:34:00

High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader support; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.

In a time when trusted journalists and media sources are disappearing, we believe the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without on-the-ground, trustworthy , civic engagement suffers, accountability falters and corruption often goes unaddressed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Here at Mississippi Today we act as watchdogs, holding those in power accountable, and as storytellers, giving a platform to voices that have been ignored for too long. And we’re committed to keeping our stories free for everyone because information should be accessible when it’s needed most.

Why NewsMatch and Why Now?

This year’s NewsMatch campaign runs from November 1 through December 31, giving us a special opportunity to make each dollar you give go even further. Through matching funds provided by local foundations like the Maddox Foundation, and national funders like the MacArthur Foundation, the Rural Partner Fund and the Hewlett Foundation, your gift will be dollar for dollar up to $1,000. Plus, if 100 new donors join us, we’ll unlock an additional $2,000 in funding, bringing us even closer to our goal. Boiled down: your donation goes four times as far.

Every dollar raised strengthens our ability to serve you with fact-based journalism on issues that impact your everyday life—whether it’s covering local election issues or reporting on decisions affecting schools, safety and economic growth in Mississippi. Your support makes it possible for us to stay rooted in the community, offering nuanced perspectives that Mississippians understand and engage with what’s around them.

Special Event: “Freedom of the Press: Southern Challenges, National Impact”

As part of the campaign, we’re to host a special virtual , “ of the Press: Southern Challenges, National Impact.” Join Deep South Today newsrooms Mississippi Today and Verite News, along with national experts on press freedom, for an in-depth discussion on the unique challenges facing journalists in the Deep South. This one-hour session will explore the critical role local newsrooms play in holding power accountable, highlighting recent restrictions on press freedom such as Louisiana’s “25- law,” which affects journalists’ ability to report vital .

We’ll examine what’s at stake if local newsrooms lose press freedoms and will discuss how you, as members of the public, can help protect it. This event is open to Mississippi Today and Verite News members as a special thank-you for supporting local journalism and standing with us in this mission. Donate today to RSVP!

How You Can Help

Make Your Gift Today

Together, let’s ensure Mississippi has the robust, independent journalism it needs to thrive. Your support fuels our ability to expose the truth, elevate marginalized stories and build a more informed Mississippi.

Thank you for believing in the power of journalism to strengthen the communities we love—not only during election season but year-round. With your help, we’ll keep Mississippi informed, engaged and connected for generations to .

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Hinds County loses fight over control of jail

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mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-11-01 12:57:00

The sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.   

Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, a failure to protect detainees from harm. 

However, the appeals court called the new injunction “overly broad” in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.

The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be

The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as “federal intrusion into RDC’s budget” – especially if the receivership has no end date. 

Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion. 

In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which people facing trial. 

“But the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,” the appeals court wrote.  

This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022. 

The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in

The county had a to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old and use of force. 

Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.

But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff. 

The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference. 

Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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