Arkansas attorney bears witness in Mississippi’s momentous Senate election

As recently as six months ago, the idea that Mississippi – MISSISSIPPI! – would elect a Black Democrat to the U.S. Senate wasn’t just far-fetched; it seemed patently absurd, for a million different baked-in structural reasons that go back more than a century. So you can imagine our surprise when the good folks of the Magnolia State actually did the damn thing and picked Democrat Scott Colom over incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Their vote makes Colom the first Democrat since 1988 and the first Black Mississippian since 1880 to represent Mississippi in the Senate.

Official word of Colom’s election came late Wednesday, more than a week after Election Day. At the time the race was called, Colom led Hyde-Smith by just over 4,000 votes out of nearly one million votes cast. 

In a race that tight, every vote mattered. Once it became clear that affidavit ballots — provisional ballots cast by people who say they are registered voters but whose name is not listed in the voter rolls for whatever reason — were going to determine the outcome, a call went out for lawyers and other civic do-gooders to head to Mississippi to make sure every valid vote was counted. At least one of those do-gooders who answered that call was from right here in Little Rock. 

“I saw the request for volunteers with voter protection and election-law experience and reached out to the Colom campaign,” lawyer and Little Rock native John Adams said.

Adams said his main job during his short stint in Mississippi was to go to circuit clerks’ offices to observe affidavit vote counting and get summary vote numbers from the circuit clerks responsible. 

“Last Thursday I watched the Oktibbeha County Election Commission open affidavit ballots in Starkville and talked to voters there,” Adams said. “A few voters told me that they were improperly removed from the rolls based on Experian data. On Friday I visited circuit clerks over in the Delta and gathered information about the status of the counts.”

Mississippi election officials’ use of questionable (at best) Experian data to purge voter rolls was well documented. Still, Adams said the locals he spoke to seemed to feel like the whole election had been handled well, at least in the areas where Adams was working. “An older Black attorney in Clarksdale who happened to be filing a document with the Coahoma clerk said he felt good about the process there.”

While politics and elections can often bring out the worst in people, Adams spoke highly of the people he met around Mississippi and said he was fortunate to get the opportunity to help.

“Almost to a person the election officials I met were transparent and helpful,” he said. “I was lucky to get to help make sure all the votes got counted and witness the watershed moment. It’s a good reminder, as the Senator-Elect said last night, to keep the faith.”

Colom will take office in January, and there’s more than a bit of delicious irony to his defeat of Hyde-Smith. In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked then-President Joe Biden’s nomination of Colom to the federal judiciary. She cited Colom’s support for transgender athletes as a reason. Had Hyde-Smith simply kept her mouth shut and her bigotry to herself, she might still have a seat in the Senate come 2027.