Mississippi election officials often say that the state's elections are run "from the ground up" at the local level and not from the top down, but that often results in a patchwork system that is prone to errors, discrepancies, and confusion.
Those failings can result in hours-long delays for voters who are sent to the wrong precinct, arrive at a polling place only to learn there are not enough ballots, and head to vote only to find that their polling place changed without warning—sometimes mere hours beforehand.
The cumulative effect of all these issues is a chipping away at democracy in a state where the ballot box is the least accessible and turnout is about the lowest in the nation.
The Mississippi Free Press' Trusted Elections Project 2024 will track these issues, interrogate the systemic causes, and examine solutions.
