U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche flew into Jackson, Mississippi, on Monday with a police escort and a $63,986,271 check, and held his announcement at City Hall. Across the street is the Hinds County Courthouse, where voters who cast affidavit ballots without photo ID had until 5 p.m. Tuesday to prove who they are. Whether those ballots count may decide who wins the U.S. Senate seat.
Scott Colom, a Democrat, led Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 2,500 votes on Monday. If he holds on, he will be the first Black senator Mississippi has sent to Washington since Reconstruction. Jackson is a majority-Black city, and Hinds County is where many of the voters who still had to cure ballots would be going.
Voting rights advocates gathered outside City Hall, saying street closures for the announcement got in the way of voters trying to reach the courthouse. “This press conference could have been done Friday, could have been done Wednesday, and it could have been done somewhere else versus City Hall,” Valencia Robinson said, as Democracy Docket reported. Demonstrators called it intimidation.
The administration has a straightforward answer. Ty Martin, a former political director of the Mississippi Republican Party, pointed out that ballots were not being counted at City Hall, and that protesters were aimed at the wrong building. The money is real, too: the Justice Department’s Model Cities Initiative will pay over three years for a bigger forensic lab, more officers and expanded surveillance, including AI-powered criminal tracking. “You’re going to have more cops on the street,” Blanche said, “and the cops on the street are going to be working with better equipment, better technology and better information.”
Jackson recorded 157 homicides in 2021, the highest per-capita rate in the country, and 79 so far this year. Mayor John Horhn said residents should not only be safe but feel safe. The grant is also well under the $125 million the police department asked for and the $100 million earlier reported, a gap that went unexplained on Monday.
Nobody has to prove that Blanche meant to keep a single voter away. The problem is a Justice Department that picked the day before the deadline, and the building next to the courthouse, to hand out money, in a state whose secretary of state deleted the mail-ballot curing rule in August and flagged more than 200,000 registrations as inactive. Mississippi has no recount law. In a race this close, Black voters in Jackson should not have had to get past a motorcade to be counted.
The deadline passed at 5 p.m. Tuesday. Counties now have to finish counting the affidavit ballots that were cured.
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