Affidavit Ballots Could Decide Mississippi Senate Race

Affidavit ballots could decide the razor-thin U.S. Senate race in Mississippi as Democratic candidate Scott Colom maintains a small lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Lawyers for both candidates are preparing for a potentially long legal battle over which provisional votes should be counted. These affidavit ballots allow individuals to vote if they lack proper ID or are not appearing as registered voters at their designated polling locations.

In Hinds County, a Democratic stronghold that supported Kamala Harris by more than 40 percentage points in 2024, officials finished processing these ballots on Wednesday. The county, which is roughly 70% Black according to U.S. Census Bureau data, is central to the tension surrounding voter registration accuracy.

“Experian told him they were not reliable. He did it anyways. So I think that this chaos is the result of that decision, and it’s not me just saying it,” Scott Colom said, according to ABC News.

The role of credit data in voter rolls

The dispute centers on a decision made in early 2025 when Mississippi officials began using data from the credit-reporting company Experian to help maintain voter rolls. While state leaders described the data as a supplemental tool to increase reliability, the company has distanced itself from its use for deactivating voters.

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“The solution provided at that time consisted of supplemental address information and was not designed or intended to validate voter records,” Scott Anderson, vice president of corporate communications at Experian, told ABC News.

A voting advocacy group and local news reports indicate that approximately 230,000 voters were deactivated from state registration lists ahead of the 2026 midterms. However, the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office clarified that this figure is a cumulative total representing years of work by various commissions, rather than a single action taken in 2026.

The Secretary of State’s office told ABC News that Experian data was used to identify roughly 113,000 individuals for review, alongside data from the U.S. Postal Service. The office also stated it is no longer using Experian data and that no registrations were deactivated within the 90-day window prohibited by federal law.

Legal safeguards and administrative friction

The surge in affidavit ballots has led to accusations that eligible voters were incorrectly removed from the rolls. This friction has turned a standard administrative process into a central pillar of the election’s outcome.

Trey Grayson, an attorney and former Kentucky Republican secretary of state, suggested that using multiple data sources is a standard practice for list maintenance. He said that federal protections are intended to prevent disenfranchisement during these processes.

“I believe that states should use as many valid sources as possible when it comes to list maintenance. Fortunately, the safeguards built into the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) prevent a voter from being purged when a state receives evidence of a move. Instead, those voters are classified as inactive and they are still eligible to vote for the next two federal election cycles so long as they provide evidence of their address.”

Grayson told ABC News that these safeguards help states balance the necessity of accurate rolls with the fundamental right to vote.

Mississippi election commissioners certify affidavit ballots in close Senate race — Associated Press

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson addressed the use of the data on a talk radio show on Monday, stating that the state had struggled to obtain sufficient information from the U.S. Postal Service regarding voters who may have moved. He described the use of Experian as a pilot program in a specific county that he found helpful.

As the state moves toward a potential projection of the winner as early as Wednesday, the focus remains on the thousands of provisional votes currently undergoing scrutiny in counties like Hinds.

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