NAACP President Lays Out Major Concerns As Deadline Nears For Mississippi Senate Race Certification

0:02All eyes are on Mississippi this week as election officials there continue to count ballots from Tuesday's midterm elections. In the race for the Senate, Democrat Scott Colombe is up by just 2 ,500 votes against Republican incumbent Cindy Hydesmith, and officials have until Friday to certify the election results. I'm Maggie McGrath, Senior Editor at Forbes, and joining us to discuss what's happening on the ground in Mississippi is the NAACP President, Derek Johnson. Just this weekend, he urged Mississippians and all Americans to, quote, remain vigilant until every legally cast vote is counted.

0:42Derek, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the opportunity. So I'm going to start with a basic question. But for those of us who live in states whose races were called on Tuesday night, the day we voted, why exactly has the vote counting effort in Mississippi extended to today, Monday, November 9th? Well, Mississippi, we have a very antiquated voting process. If you go to the polls and for whatever reason, your name isn't on the poll book, you fill out what's called here an affidavit ballot. In other states it's called provisional ballot. and you fill the ballot out, it's placed in an envelope, and when election officials count everything else, they then go and resolve whether or not your affidavit ballot is a legitimate ballot.

1:33And so they will have to check the inactive role. If you're on the inactive role, then they can move your ballot from inactive to active and then cast it. If you have to do the affidavit ballot because you didn't have the required identification, You have five days to cure, meaning you take five days to go to the county clerk office and you present your identification so your ballot can be counted. And this is all done manually by hand. We have not updated our voting systems. We need to reform our election laws so we can be much more efficient in tallying votes. Now, this year in the Mississippi, NAACP office opened 11 voter registration sites, registered more than 17 ,000 voters.

2:24Was voter turnout an issue here? Was the state prepared for the number of people who voted? And is that playing into the situation at all? The state was not prepared. Each county election offices, they were overwhelmed with the turnout, which is a wonderful thing, but they were only overwhelmed because we have not upgraded our systems and process. There is no reason why the state of Mississippi has not adopted same-day voter registration. There is no reason why we are forcing voters to go to specific precincts when they live in the same county that the ballot is the same. There is no reason why we are managing this in terms of a paper count as relates to affidavit ballot.

3:11And unfortunately, the state of Mississippi had a third party vendor, a credit card vendor to do a database vote match. And it kicked off the voter rolls, almost 200 ,000 people. And many of those individuals showed up to cast a ballot only to find out they were not on the voter rolls. And so that also had a major factor in the number of affidavit ballots that was received for this cycle. I saw a story about one man who that credit card system said was still living in his childhood home and not his current home as an adult. And that resulted in needing an affidavit ballot. So are these some of the ballots that are still being counted and have until tomorrow to arrive, assuming they were postmarked by Election Day?

3:56Yeah, so those that need to be postmarked, those are absentee ballots. Oftentimes, they were mailed in from our military servicemen and women or individuals who had a reason to vote by absentee. In the state of Mississippi, we don't have an early voting provision. You have to have an excuse to vote by absentee. And so if you're over 65, you can vote by absentee. You're in the military. You think you're going to be outside of the county on the day of the election. Those are all reasons why people request a mail-in ballot. But there's no reason why we shouldn't have no excuse of balloting so people can just go vote early.

4:42And many of this could have been resolved by people going to the courthouse up to two weeks before the election. When we talk about those absentee ballots, given that deadline of tomorrow to be received, assuming they were postmarked by Election Day, how do you expect those absentee ballots to affect the results we're seeing? It's a razor-thin race. Is there anything we can presume about those ballots that might be coming in? Well, we're more concerned about watching affidavit ballots. It's far more of those still outstanding than what we anticipate in terms of mail-in ballots. Oftentimes, the mail-in ballots have been received by this point.

5:21They will trickle in. But this is the affidavit ballots where you have a couple of thousands in several counties across the state. Now, over the weekend, you and the NAACP said, quote, We will stand against any individual or party who seeks to intimidate, discourage or use their platform to undermine the work of tallying votes. We must honor the voters and make every vote count and remain, as I noted at the beginning, ever vigilant. So, Derek, what intimidation efforts have been taking place? What do we know about what's happening on the ground and what's happening for these Mississippi election officials?

6:01Well, last week we had the current head of the State Republican Party, who is also the former U.S. attorney for the state of Mississippi, hold a press conference in front of Hines County Courthouse. And in his statements, he was using buzzwords like fraud, we're going to sue you, all of those things to create fear. And when you think about his prior position, he assumed the posture of someone in law enforcement or had authority. We don't think that's appropriate. No one has alleged or identified any fraudulent behavior. And we should be supporting our election officials, encouraging them to continue to do the job within the law, because these are hardworking individuals.

6:48Many of them are doing this just above volunteer. And so we shouldn't create a climate of intimidation. We should be rallying around them in support and thanking them for their civic duty. The 80 plus counties in Mississippi have until Friday of this week to count the ballots. Will election officials be able to meet that deadline? When do you think we'll see an outcome to this race? Well, we believe that many of the counties that are still counting, they will be wrapping things up. We hope by tomorrow, no later than Wednesday, to certify the election per county. And then Friday is the deadline for the Secretary of State to certify the overall election.

7:33We are beginning to see counties today close out. Our hope is that they will be able to certify as early as tomorrow and no later than Wednesday so we can wrap things up. Is it true that any lawsuits over the results can't happen before things are wrapped up? and how concerned are you about litigation in this case? Well, I just want to stay focused on the election officials completing the count. We're making sure we're monitoring so there are no threats of intimidation, no one is interfering in their work, and encouraging them to continue to count ballots and do it very legally and in a very transparent way.

8:21That's our focus right now. And I think if we stay there and the election officials complete their job, we will be able to ascertain the will of voters in the state of Mississippi. What is your biggest concern as these final results come in? We've talked about a lot that's happening. Is there one thing that keeps you up at night or has been keeping you up at night over the last five and six days? Well, interference by individuals who purport to represent the incumbent or maybe the incumbent team, we should not have a system that can be tampered with by individuals either interfering in the count or seeking some legal recourse without justification.

9:06I just hope that the election officials are able to pull through, not be confronted with intimidations, and complete the count. Now, of course, you are focused on completing the count, but you also mentioned the counting by hand and some of the things that could be improved in Mississippi in the future. What are the biggest lessons from this election cycle that you as an organization will be using to inform your work and advocacy in 2027? Well, when our legislative body meet in January of next year, we will have an election reform package that they should be considering. It is absolutely critical that we fix these unnecessary gaps and make the constitutional right of voting as easy as possible so that more people participate.

9:58And it's key. Opening up access to voting for legitimate legal voters is absolutely key. Next year is our statewide election. There will be people on the ballot from the top of the ticket, all of our constitutional officers, all the way down to county officials and district officials. And it's really important we fix this problem now so we're not confronted with it again next year. Derek, we've covered a lot of ground, but is there anything else you would want the Forbes audience specifically to know and understand about the vote counting in Mississippi right now? Well, it's just really important that we support our election officials, that in any given area that's a democracy, we settle disagreements around policy and who should represent us at the ballot box.

10:47We should not try to manipulate the ballot box to sway the outcome in either direction. NAACP President Derek Johnson, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us during such a busy time. Thank you.