Jackson Jambalaya

 How bad was Michael Watson’s voter roll screw-up? 

After thousands of voters had to cast affidavit ballots on Nov. 3^rd, the website of Secretary of Agriculture and Commerce Andy Gipson was full of critical comments. Andy’s office has nothing to with the elections, but voters were so frustrated they vented on his website. Here’s a sample:

“My sister-in-law from Hinds County had to vote affidavit. She was told her name was not on the roll book although she has lived at the same address for years and voted in that precinct.”

“I had to vote affidavit – was told I was nowhere in the voting system. I’ve been voting for the last six years.”

“My husband voted affidavit and it says his vote cannot be found.”

“My elderly parents went to vote and my mother had been removed from the roll. The line was 20 plus people long for her to vote affidavit. Too long for them to wait. She did not get to vote.”

Many affidavit ballot voters were concerned their votes didn’t count. And there were reports of affidavits thrown out because poll workers failed to sign them.

Secretary of State Watson, the state election tzar, is the targeted villain. He paid $50,000 to Experian to compare his voter list with their consumer information. His office used the results to flag voters with suspect addresses. The flagged list went to local election commissioners. A state law he helped pass in 2024 required commissioners to inactivate voters if they did not respond to a confirmation post card.

This happened even though Experian said it could not guarantee the reliability of its data.

“Mississippi’s unorthodox approach … undermines the National Voter Registration Act’s procedural protections,” explained the Election Law Blog. “Mississippi has created a unique concoction – not only experimenting with credit data to mark registrants inactive and excluding them from pollbooks, but mailing notices to registrants at their suspected new addresses rather than their registration addresses.”

“In the vast majority of states, inactive registrants can still vote a regular ballot,” continued the Blog. “Under Mississippi state law, though, registrants with an inactive registration status are excluded from pollbooks. If they show up to vote, they cast provisional rather than regular ballots.”

As many as 230,000 individuals were impacted across the state prior to the general election. In DeSoto County alone the number of voters made inactive hit 15,000 with half of those occurring between the March primaries and the general election, reported Mississippi Today.

Potentially one of the more stupid acts by a public official in Mississippi history, it is already one of the more consequential.

“The way of fools is right in their own eyes” – Proverbs 12:15.

Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from Jackson.