Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s campaign is leaning on Mississippi’s affidavit-ballot statute and federal retention law to demand that counties wall off every affidavit ballot from the November 3, 2026 general election.
The demand letter, dated Thursday, November 5, 2026, comes from the law firm Lex Politica, counsel for Cindy Hyde-Smith for U.S. Senate. It was sent by electronic mail and public release to county election commissioners and circuit clerks in all 82 Mississippi counties.
Here is the legal framework the letter cites, and what it asks counties to do.
The Mississippi statute: affidavit ballots are already separate by law
The letter’s starting point is Miss. Code Ann. § 23-15-573, the statute governing affidavit ballots — Mississippi’s version of provisional ballots. Under that law, each affidavit ballot must be sealed in an envelope bearing the voter’s written and signed affidavit and name, and affidavit voters must be recorded in a separate receipt book. Election commissioners must then examine the relevant records and determine whether each ballot may lawfully be counted, and the County Election Commission is responsible for verifying the affidavit ballot envelopes and counting legally cast ballots. The letter also cites the 2026 County Election Handbook, § XVII(A), pages 55-56.
The campaign’s first demand follows directly from that structure: maintain all affidavit ballots separately from regular and absentee ballots, with original envelopes kept as a distinct group — including accepted, rejected, unresolved and cured affidavit ballots.
Documenting the disposition of each ballot
The letter’s second demand is record-keeping. For each affidavit ballot, counties are asked to maintain records of acceptance, rejection or unresolved status, the basis for the determination and any timely cure. For affidavit ballots subject to the five-business-day voter-ID cure period, the letter asks that timely submitted cure information be preserved, recording the date and time each cure document is received, citing § 23-15-573(3)(d). The required affidavit-ballot information must also be recorded in the Statewide Elections Management System, including the reasons for issuance and the numbers counted and not counted, citing § 23-15-573(5).
Preservation as potential evidence
The letter’s third demand is the broadest: preserve all associated materials and custody records — envelopes, separate receipt books, eligibility-review and cure records, pollbooks and electronic pollbook data, Statewide Elections Management System entries and audit logs, tabulator tapes and memory devices, resolution-board and duplication records, election commission minutes, communications with the Secretary of State regarding affidavit-ballot determinations, video recordings of ballot storage areas, disposition records, relevant ballot-accounting and tabulation records and existing records documenting transfer, access and custody. Counties are directed not to overwrite, purge or reformat any electronic data.
The reason given is that the ballots and records are “potential evidence in any box examination under § 23-15-911, election contest, or proceeding before the United States Senate,” and the campaign says Hyde-Smith is entitled to their preservation “in an unaltered and identifiable state.”
A footnote in the letter also cites the Help America Vote Act, 52 U.S.C. § 21082, which separately requires that any provisional ballot cast after the regular poll-closing time under a court or other order extending voting hours be kept separate from other provisional ballots.
The 22-month federal retention rule
The letter notes that federal law independently requires covered federal-election records to be retained and preserved for 22 months from the date of the election, citing 52 U.S.C. § 20701. The requested measures are to remain in place through completion of the canvass, certification and any ballot-box examination, election contest, runoff or other authorized post-election activity connected with the November 3 general election — and, the letter adds, completion of those separation and preservation processes “does not eliminate applicable retention obligations.”
What the letter does not do
The letter makes no allegation of fraud or any specific irregularity. It is a preservation demand, not a request to stop counting. It states that implementation “must not delay lawful tabulation, prevent the counting of any legally cast ballot, or compromise ballot secrecy.”
Why it matters now
The race remains too close to call. The latest Associated Press figures from Wednesday evening showed Democrat Scott Colom leading Hyde-Smith by just over 1,100 votes out of nearly 949,000 cast. The Colom campaign has estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 affidavit ballots remain outstanding statewide — a campaign estimate, not an official count — and the Secretary of State’s office has said more than 3,600 absentee mail ballots had not been returned.
Each county is asked to confirm receipt and advise the campaign’s Hannah Streitman by 5:00 p.m. Central Time today, November 5, whether the requested safeguards are in place, and if any are not, to identify the outstanding measures and the anticipated time for implementation. Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson was copied on the letter.
Key dates ahead: voters who cast an affidavit ballot because they lacked photo ID have until 5 p.m. Tuesday, November 10, to show an acceptable ID at their circuit clerk’s office or complete an affidavit of religious objection. Mail-in absentee ballots must also reach the circuit clerk by 5 p.m. November 10. Counties must certify their results by November 13, and the Secretary of State is scheduled to declare the results on December 3.
Mississippi has no automatic recount law. A recount is possible only if ordered by a judge in an election-contest proceeding, and there is no state-law contest procedure for a U.S. Senate election — the Senate judges the elections of its own members.
