Malfunctioning machines and poll worker confusion were among complaints, with Democrats saying DeSoto County had long waiting times to vote.
Polls were open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday, and election officials were urging voters to be patient.
Voters shouldn’t have to be patient; voting infrastructure should be planned with sufficient resources and redundancies to ensure all votes are recorded quickly. Long waiting times in states like Mississippi intentionally disenfranchises voters who cannot take off work and might not want to wait in line for an extended amount of time after work (if their shift even allows for that) before heading home.
Nothing screams democracy like waiting 12+ hours to be able to cast your vote.
Not Murican, but shouldn’t there also be vote by mail?
it depends on the state one is in. Mississippi probably has restrictive absentee ballot access. (not that I would know, I’m in Minnesota, and my ballot was mailed to me automatically. here, it’s something you have to opt into, though.)
Each state sets how they do elections. Some states like mine have 100% mail in voting so I can do it at my leisure well ahead of election day. Other states force you to do it in person and play god with polling locations by flling Republican areas with then while having little to none in Democratic areas meaning long waits and disenfranchised voters.
I’m starting to wonder how the US can even function the way it does…
Welcome to the beginning of understanding why so much of our society is dysfunctional.
It doesn’t.
I think mail-in vote eligibility for Mississippi is pretty limited.
Also, I’m not from that state, but I recall a while ago there was some sense that the federal government was going to try and mess with votes by fucking with the post office. Some of what they tried failed in the courts, but I decided I’d vote in person to avoid that particular problem, so there might be other people who decided in-person was most likely to get their vote counted.
Well, yeah, ideally, but this is all likely by design, as the (Republican) MS government was surely trying to suppress voters and make it harder overall to vote.
Let’s talk about the asshole Ty Pinkins running in the left siphoning off 20k votes from the democratic candidate? Like wtf is he thinking?? He has zero chance of winning, his side has a good chance and he’s like nah I want to fuck over all the black people and poor people in my state for my tiny sliver of the spotlight? Honestly I don’t even trust that narrative I wouldn’t be surprised at all if his campaign was propped up explicitly to take votes on the left, more voter suppression just in a different form, voter dillution
In fairness, never in a million years would I have said a democrat, much less a black one, had an actual chance at winning in Mississippi of all places before today.
When the Republicans are in charge institutional ineptitude is the result.
Unfortunately, that same ineptitude makes it harder to vote and remove the horrible leadership. It’s a self reinforcing system rational people have to fight every cycle.
Is it ineptitude or by design
Yes.
Of all times for this to even happen… I check, and it’s literally still within 10 to 100 votes different between a Dem getting elected senator there.
I hope this gets all the investigations needed. Mississippi Blue fucking turned out and if they won, they deserve to be up there with the likes of Kansas, South Carolina and Texas.
I don’t know specifically about Mississippi, and the specific voting precincts where this happened will matter, but in general, problems voting on Election Day probably favored Democrats.
Democratic voters had a lot more willingness to vote early in this election, and so a lot voted by mail nationwide; the expectation was that in-person voting on Election Day would have Republican candidates tend to catch up on vote count.
I remember some of the election coverage was talking about it, because it rained in some places on Election Day. Rain tends to depress turnout, and that rain probably favored Democratic candidates.
Weather might help Democrats, but in general a lot of red states will screw with the number and location of polling stations in heavily blue districts to supress votes. So if the issue is structural that can be a good indication that Republican voter manipulation worked.
True enough. There was a spoiler worth about 2% which is a bigger deal. In any case, I learned they don’t even really have a recount procedure so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.
