MISSISSIPPI COUNT ENTERS THIRD DAY AT ONE BALLOT PER MISSISSIPPI; STATE DEFENDS THE CADENCE
JACKSON, Miss. — Two days after polls closed, Mississippi’s Senate race remains uncalled for a reason election officials describe as procedural and everyone else describes as audible: having counted its ballots by machine on election night, the state is now counting them again, out loud, one at a time, in Mississippis.
The practice, which predates the voting machine and has survived every effort to retire it, requires each ballot to be tallied with the full cadence — “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” — at a pace officials call unhurried on purpose. A ballot counted faster than a Mississippi, or with the word shortened, does not count. “You cannot rush a Mississippi,” a spokesman for Secretary of State Michael Watson said Thursday. “That is rather the point of a Mississippi.”
As of Thursday morning, the Secretary of State’s running total of the audible count stood at 812,206 Mississippi out of more than 950,000 ballots cast. The machines, by contrast, finished Tuesday night, and in their silent count Democrat Scott Colom leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by fewer than 2,000 votes — a race that at one point Wednesday was separated by 28 votes, a margin the counters could pronounce in under half a minute. The Associated Press has declined to call it. So, necessarily, has Mississippi.
The count has not run uninterrupted. Counters in Hinds County paused shortly after midnight Wednesday at 17,411 Mississippi and resumed at eight o’clock sharp with 17,412, a transition officials described as delicate. “You do not lose your place,” one counter said. “Losing your place is the only way this takes longer than it is already taking.”
With the margin this thin, both campaigns have stationed observers at the count whose only assignment is to listen. A mumbled or swallowed syllable voids the ballot pending review. Colom observers have challenged eleven ballots so far, including one in Rankin County in which the counter was heard to say what sounded like “Miss’ippi.” The ballot has been set aside. The counter has been reminded that the state is not a nickname.
Nor is the total fixed. Mail and affidavit ballots arriving through Tuesday — affidavit voters have until then to present identification — are appended to the back of the count at whatever number the count has then reached. Each new ballot adds one Mississippi to the end of the line. The line is the count. The count is the line.
Asked about a recount, a Hyde-Smith aide noted that Mississippi is the only state in the nation whose election laws contain no recount provision at all, and that a court-ordered recount would in any event begin again at one Mississippi. “Nobody in this state,” the aide said, “has the strength.”
“It is the only count in American elections that is also a unit of time,” said Dr. Marcia Hale, professor of political science and director of the Institute for Civic Reconciliation at Kestrel State University, and a staff political consultant to this newspaper. “Mississippi is not behind. Mississippi is audible. The difference is roughly nine days.”
Counties must certify their results by November 13. At the present pace, officials project the final Mississippi will be reached on the evening of November 12, leaving one full day to spare — a margin the Secretary of State’s office calls comfortable, and which equals, at the official rate, about 86,400 Mississippi.
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