According to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office some 91,000 people have requested absentee ballots statewide. Of that number more than 58,000 have voted and mailed the ballots back to their county circuit clerk's office. Adams County Circuit Clerk Eva Givens says people are telling her they’re concerned about going to the polls.
“We have a lot of people who just say they feel comfortable voting absentee. They don’t want to stand in long lines due to COVID,” said Givens.
Givens says 700 people voted absentee by mail and in-person so far. Voters must have an excuse to do so, such as: they’re 65 or older, they have a disability or they’re in the military. This year due to the coronavirus, if they are quarantined by a doctor they can vote absentee. Professor Nathan Shrader chairs the Government and Politics Department at Millsaps College in Jackson. He says the impact of absentee voting will not be known until the Nov. 3, election is over.
“The number that I will actually be the most interested in seeing is once the votes are counted and unfortunately this is the only way we can know this, once the votes are counted, what is the share, the percentage of those returned absentee ballots that are accepted and what’s the share that are rejected? said Shrader.
An NPR analysis of this year’s presidential primary found in Mississippi, 315 absentee ballots were rejected. It’s not known if they weren’t counted because of an error.
