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Story Publication logo October 30, 2024

Incorrect Information May Send Thousands of Mississippi Voters to the Wrong Place on Election Day

Authors:
Mississippi Trusted Elections Project 2024
English

A look at a patchwork elections system that is prone to errors

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Multiple Authors
SECTIONS

The Mississippi Free Press held its second Biloxi Solutions Circles event, this time focused on voting, on October 22, 2024. Image by Kimberly Griffin. United States.

A small brick home with three pairs of dark red shutters sits alongside several similarly modest houses across South Lake Street from hundreds of rows of green crops in a wide, flat field in Shelby, Miss. There should be a voting precinct here—at least, that’s what the state’s polling place locator tool says—but neither the little brick house nor its neighbors appear prepared to accommodate the Liberty Chapel precinct’s roughly 630 voters.

That’s a situation some Bolivar County voters could find themselves in come Election Day if nothing changes. In fact, while the State of Mississippi’s My Election Day tool will direct most voters to the correct precinct, the tool could send thousands of voters in 20 precincts across the state to the wrong place on Nov. 5—unless local officials correct entries for polling place addresses in Mississippi’s Statewide Election Management System.

The Mississippi Fress Press (MFP) also found that local election officials have changed at least 54 precincts across 24 counties since the March 2024 primaries. But not all those changes are reflected in SEMS, the database from which the My Election Day polling place locator tool pulls its information. Over the years, voters have told MFP that their local election officials failed to notify them of changed precincts or that the online polling place locator tool sent them to the wrong place on Election Day.


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In an interview on Oct. 21, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson explained that his office houses SEMS and oversees its operation, but “our clerks and folks at the county level are the ones sending information in for polling locations.”

“I do think it’s important for people to know that though we house SEMS, the data that’s put into SEMS comes from our counties, especially when it comes to our poll locations. So those are coming directly from the ground on the county level and those—the county supervisors, the (circuit) clerks—are the ones who decide where those precincts are,” the Republican secretary of state said.

In Mississippi, elected county supervisors select polling locations and are typically in charge of moving them, closing old ones or opening new ones. Depending on the county, circuit clerks and election commissioners are supposed to handle entering information into SEMS and informing voters about any changes to their precincts. The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office trains and communicates with local election officials, but it does not participate in polling-place selection or changes.

“We just then take the information, and it goes immediately live (in the My Election Day polling place locator tool) from SEMS how local officials entered it,” said Kyle Kirkpatrick, the assistant secretary of state for the Elections Division at the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office. “So there’s nothing that needs to be done on our end to make that live. So whatever they have entered is what is going to show to voters.”

‘Know Who to Hold Accountable’

The problems the Mississippi Free Press found in SEMS this year are not new. Since October 2020, the MFP has examined issues with voting precincts and the Statewide Election Management System in every federal or statewide primary and general election. 

In 2022, a coalition of voting-rights groups cited the MFP’s work in a letter to Secretary Watson, asking his office to take steps to ensure counties provide accurate information ahead of that year’s midterm election. The coalition told the secretary of state that its members were “concerned that your refusal to implement the specific recommendations we outlined in our previous letter has and will result in the continued disenfranchisement of Mississippians.”

In response, Watson said he did not have the authority to enforce accurate reporting in SEMS from the counties, telling the voting-rights groups that “Mississippi is a bottom-up state, meaning local officials run our elections.”

During the Oct. 21 interview, the MFP asked Watson about the possibility of a legislative fix that would require counties by law to keep SEMS updated with accurate information.

“The Legislature can do what they want to, for sure. Being a former member of the (Mississippi) Senate, if that’s their will, they can pass anything they want to when it comes to a statute like that demanding those changes be up to date,” he said.

Watson emphasized that most local election officials “are really good about” doing their jobs and keeping information up-to-date but said his office has taken steps to train and work with local election officials to ensure better compliance. He cited his Elections 101 Campaign to educate voters and his 82 County Tour meeting with local election officials.

“I think it’s important, and one of the things we’ve done with our Elections 101 campaign is really to try to educate folks on how elections work, whose job is what, and I think that’s an important piece to us to make sure (voters) know who to hold accountable when you’re having polling locations that may be off a bit,” Watson said.


Mississippi Voting Precincts With Address Issues, 2024 General Election

A searchable table shows Mississippi voting precincts that had erroneous addresses listed in the Statewide Election Management System report as of Oct. 3, 2024.


Indeed, while errors remain, some counties have made progress since the 2024 primaries, with the number of erroneous voting precinct addresses the MFP found listed in SEMS dropping from 90 in March to just 20 listed in an Oct. 3 copy of SEMS. In March, Jones County alone had 30 errors in SEMS due to incomplete addresses; county officials have since updated all precincts with complete addresses. The Mississippi Free Press asked Watson what prompted the recent change in so many counties that have had errors for years.

“We work with them all the time. And when I did our 82 County Tour building those relationships with our clerks and commissioners, people like you who bring the issue up on different news sources where they see it, and I give a whole lot of credit to Kyle,” he said, referring to Kirkpatrick, the assistant secretary of state for the Elections Division. “Kyle has weekly phone calls with our clerks and really kind of giving them up-to-date information on what’s going on with elections, especially this close to Election Day.”

How We Did This Work

In 2020, the Mississippi Secretary of State asked counties which precincts had changed since that year’s primaries and put out a list based on what local officials had submitted. That list included only 17 precincts, and the Mississippi Free Press quickly identified at least one known precinct change that was not on the list. After requesting a copy of the SEMS report from the Secretary of State’s Office, the MFP found that 55 voting precincts had changed between the 2020 primaries and 2020 general election.

The MFP continued that work afterward for the 2022 midterm primaries and general election, the 2023 state primaries and general election and now the 2024 primaries and general election.

In late September of this year, the MFP requested a SEMS report from the Secretary of State’s Office and received a PDF copy dated Oct. 3, which the MFP compared to the list of changes from the primaries to look for differences. The MFP also sent emails to circuit clerks in each of the state’s 82 counties asking each if any precincts had changed and asking if they had their own lists separate from SEMS.

After several rounds of emails, with fewer than half the counties responding, the MFP began contacting each county by phone, asking if there had been changes to polling places. In some counties, circuit clerks or their employees were able to give immediate answers; in others, circuit clerks directed the MFP to reach out to election commissioners.

After getting responses by email or phone from all 82 counties, the MFP began comparing the information in the Oct. 3 SEMS report with the information counties shared and identified conflicts. Those conflicts kicked off a new round of calls to local election officials; in several cases, it took multiple calls to different county offices to sort out the discrepancies, though most county officials were willing to help (including the ones mentioned below).

  • In Attala County, SEMS appeared to show a change in address for Precinct 24 (Liberty Chapel), located at a Masonic Lodge, from an address in McCool, Miss., to one in Ethel, Miss. When the Mississippi Free Press called the circuit clerk’s office, an official there said the McCool address was correct. However, upon calling the Attala County Election Commission, District 2 Election Commissioner Annie R. Winter told us that she and the other commissioners are in charge of putting information in SEMS and that the new Ethel address is the correct one. We listed this as a correction, not a change.
  • In Bolivar County, SEMS showed that a precinct previously known as the Shelby Police Station precinct appeared to move from an address on 3rd Avenue in Shelby, Miss., to an address on South Lake Street. But a quick glance on Google Street view showed that the new address listed in SEMS was a residential address to a small home (this is the precinct described in the anecdote at the start of this story). After several calls and emails to the Cleveland Circuit Clerk’s office, the MFP was able to get in touch with District 5 Election Commissioner Ora Jackson, who made several calls and helped the MFP identify the fact that the precinct was at neither the old nor new address in SEMS; it had instead moved to the Dr. Robert T. Hollingsworth Public Library in Shelby.
  • In Sharkey County, SEMS appeared to show that the Rolling Fork Third District precinct was located at the Sharkey County Courthouse. But a list the MFP received from the county showed that it was located at the Northgate Community Center. When the MFP called the circuit clerk’s office, an employee said that the precinct had moved to the community center before the primaries while the courthouse undergoes renovations (MFP did not identify this change in the March 2024 list). Asked why the information was never updated in SEMS, the employee said it was likely because the move was only temporary and that the precinct would move back to the courthouse after renovations were finished. Because this was a change that happened before the 2024 primaries, we have listed it as an address correction.
  • The Oct. 3, 2024, SEMS report did not appear to show any changes in Tippah County. However, reached by phone, a Tippah County Circuit Clerk’s office employee told the MFP that three precincts had closed down: Precinct 10 (Cotton Plant), Precinct 12 (Clarysville) and Precinct 24 (Hopper’s Shop). Later, the MFP spoke with Tippah County District 2 Election Commissioner Larry Nabors, who confirmed that all three precincts had closed and said the circuit clerk handles SEMS updates for precincts in Tippah County.
  • In the SEMS report, Warren County and SEMS both listed Precinct 222 as being at Eagle Lake Methodist Church, but provided different addresses. When the MFP called the Warren County Circuit Clerk’s Office, an employee said the county address was the correct one. However, after looking up that address on Google Street View, the address appeared to go to the Eagle Lake Fire Department—not a church. After several more calls, an employee offered a third address that was in neither the county’s list nor the SEMS database: 16785 Highway 465, Vicksburg, Miss. That address matched the one for the church in Google Maps. We listed this as a correction.

After sorting out all the discrepancies, the MFP reconciled the conflicts in a spreadsheet to prepare the tables and maps to display the information. However, despite our best efforts to provide accurate information, we cannot guarantee that we have identified all polling place changes or that every precinct in our master list is accurate.

In the process of identifying the changes that happened between the 2024 primaries and the 2024 general election, we also identified several changes that happened between the 2023 elections and the 2024 primaries that we had missed previously—such as the one in Sharkey County mentioned above. We also identified a precinct in Holmes County that moved before the 2024 primaries (now listed as a correction). In Holmes County, local officials did not update that precinct in SEMS until after the 2024 primaries, however, which is why we did not detect that change in the list of changes we released in March. Local election officials also did not tell us there were any changes when we asked in March.

Asked about the fact that those responsible for keeping SEMS updated seems to vary between circuit clerks and election commissioners from one county to another, Secretary of State Michael Watson told the MFP that it is not unusual.

“I think you sometimes get in that situation where you have a long-serving commissioner or a new clerk or a long-serving clerk and new commissioners, and sometimes there’s a tug-of-war over whose job is what,” he said. “But the jobs don’t change. Everybody understands what we’ve got to do for elections, and I’ll tell you it’s a team sport. And so our clerks and commissioners are fantastic at what they do as long as the job’s getting done.”

In some cases, local election officials have in the past changed voting precincts mere days or weeks before an election—making it difficult for voters to find out about the changes. In 2023, Hinds County moved two precincts the day before the primaries. A legislative effort in the Mississippi House earlier this year could have limited the ability of election officials to change polling places within 60 days of an election but House Bill 1156 died in a Senate committee after passing the House.

In September, Dr. Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University in Alabama who is also the founding editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice, shared her expertise with the Mississippi Free Press.

“It sounds like Mississippi has a system with multiple offices touching elections and doing different things,” she said, after the MFP described some of the issues with SEMS (she has not focused on Mississippi specifically in her work). “The stated principle behind having multiple offices taking care of different functions is that when you have different people touching the election, you have greater accountability to each other, which is supposed to increase transparency and daylight in the process. However, if people aren’t communicating with one another, what it does is cause confusion.”

Voters Share Other Concerns at MFP Solutions Circles

Over the years, the Mississippi Free Press has repeatedly heard from voters who faced problems at the polls stemming from precinct changes. This fall, the Mississippi Free Press has held four voting-centric solutions circles, including two virtual ones, one in Jackson and one in Biloxi. During those events, voters have shared other election-related concerns as well.

One participant in the Biloxi circles, Coralie Rose, shared that she was purged from the voter rolls in 2016 when she was a registered voter in Forrest County. She agreed to an interview about her experience.

“I had been registered to vote for quite a while there, and I also had been called for jury duty a couple of times and never actually served jury duty because both times there was a plea,” she said, noting that she had voted in several previous elections. “So I know that I was on the rolls because my polling station was Thames Elementary School in the gym, and the house was right next to Thames.”

In November 2016, Rose had been temporarily working in Starkville, Miss., where she had an apartment, but her residence remained in Hattiesburg.

She drove back home to Hattiesburg on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, to cast her ballot. But when she arrived at her polling place, poll workers could not find her on the voter rolls. Rose said she had not registered to vote elsewhere or requested that her voter registration be moved. “It wasn’t supposed to be a permanent move, so I expected to be able to vote in my own precinct.” She was able to cast an affidavit ballot, though officials never confirmed whether it was counted. The experience left her concerned about voters being purged without their knowledge. (Mississippi voters can check their registration status using the voter registration lookup tool.)

During the circles, we repeatedly heard voters express frustration that basic information on voting was not widely available. In response, the MFP has published several voting information guides, including ones on how to cast an absentee ballot, how to get a free voter ID and how to apply to work the polls.

Voters at the solutions circles also brought up concerns about transportation to the polls, Election Day child care, accessibility for disabled voters, the lack of early voting options in Mississippi and voting for eligible incarcerated people. You can read more about the outcomes from our solutions circles here.

The Mississippi Free Press plans to continue to interrogate not only issues with the state’s database of voting precincts, but other concerns voters continue to share in our solutions circles, tips and elsewhere. If you are interested in participating in future MFP solutions circles, you can fill out our interest form here to be notified about any future virtual events or events in your area and to suggest that we host 2025 circles in your area.


If your voting precinct has changed this year but is not in our list, you experience any problems with voting or you think we’ve made a mistake, please email us at [email protected].

Read more coverage of this year’s election cycle on our Elections Zone 2024 page.

Mississippians will vote for presidential, congressional, judicial and regional offices on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. Any eligible registered voter who registered to vote in person by Oct. 7 or had their voter registration application postmarked by Oct. 7 can cast a ballot in the general election.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Contact your local circuit clerk or election commissioners for polling place information. Voters must bring an accepted form of photo ID to the polls; if they do not have an accepted form of photo ID, voters can get a free voter ID from their local circuit clerk before Election Day. For more information, visit sos.ms.gov/yall-vote.

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