Mississippi voters report problems amid heavy midterm turnout

Mississippi voters reported problems casting ballots across the state Tuesday, from long lines to machine malfunctions, in what appeared to be heavy turnout for a midterm election.

The state Democratic Party filed a court challenge after polls closed, saying several precincts in DeSoto County had problems, including delayed openings, “extraordinary waiting periods” and a shortage of regular ballots and affidavit ballots.

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

The Democrats’ complaint in DeSoto County sought to keep precincts open an extra hour, but court records showed no immediate ruling on that request. The complaint said that two precincts in the county opened an hour late.

The Mississippi secretary of state’s office in a Tuesday afternoon statement said that its elections hotline had seen a high volume of calls and reports of late-opening precincts, voting machines being temporarily down and issues with voters verifying their registration status.

Polls were open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday, and election officials were urging voters to be patient.

Jada Barnes, a field director with the nonprofit Mississippi Votes Action Fund, said its election hotline had seen a flurry of calls Tuesday morning from voters who faced trouble at the polls, including machine malfunctions and long waits in DeSoto County, and lengthy lines in Hinds County. 

“I know our hotline has really been jumping, for lack of a better word,” she said. 

On social media, Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote his office had received multiple calls about voters who learned at the polls that they had been marked inactive. Watson wrote that this can happen after election commissioners verify voter data shared by his office.

“Voter roll maintenance is the cornerstone of election integrity,” he wrote.

Watson added that voters who have been marked inactive should cast affidavit ballots, which would reactivate their status in the State Election Management System.

That’s exactly what Jennifer Mixon did after a poll worker couldn’t find her name in the voter rolls at First Presbyterian in Madison.

After calling the circuit clerk’s office, Mixon said she learned she had been marked inactive, even though she has regularly voted at First Presbyterian for years, including most recently in a 2025 state Senate election. The reason? Mixon said the clerk’s office told her she had failed to respond to a confirmation letter sent to her old address in Jackson.

Making matters more frustrating, Mixon said her husband, who has lived at the same Madison address as her for the past seven years, was able to vote normally. But she said she was far from the only voter who couldn’t cast a standard ballot at her precinct.

“The affidavit room was very busy,” she said.

In Hinds County, some voters reported protracted wait times. Christopher Windfield said he arrived at 7 a.m. at Griffith Memorial Baptist Church on Terry Road in Byram, the same precinct he has voted at since 2008, to one long, slow-moving line. This was surprising, Windfield said, because the precinct usually uses two lines to keep voters moving.

It took the artist who works at Canopy Children’s Solutions about 50 minutes to cast his ballot. By the time he left, Windfield said the line had grown to wrap around the church.

“I don’t know if it was voter suppression or what caused it, but it was just too inconvenient,” he said.

In past years, Hinds County voters have encountered disorganization, including numerous precincts running out of ballots, leaving voters waiting in line for hours after polls closed.

Hinds County is more organized this year, said Kidada Brown, a Hinds County election commissioner. “We good,” she told a reporter as she walked into a precinct.

On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, voters reported hour-long lines at precincts across Jackson County. 

Jackson County election officials issued a short statement on social media, attributing equipment issues at multiple polling places to Jackson County Election Commission’s new voting machines.

Danny Glaskox, the commission’s chairman, said the new electronic poll books confused some of the elderly poll workers at many of the county’s 31 precincts, even though he held training ahead of election day. 

“I said, ‘Where were you when I trained you?’ And they said, ‘We were there, we just didn’t understand how to do it.’ And I said, ‘Well you should’ve told me!’” 

Glaskox said he had to drive to several precincts to show the poll workers how to fully plug in the electronic scanner. At the Ocean Springs Civic Center, Glaskox said a creased ballot got stuck in a machine, and poll workers didn’t know how to get it unstuck. 

“They were intimidated by the machine, to be honest with you,” he said. 

State Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, said he heard from a constituent who felt the crowd at their precinct was exacerbated by a confusing system to cast a ballot. 

“It sounds like a process issue,” he said. “I hate that.” 

In addition to a hotly contested Senate race between Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom, Wiggins said turnout in Jackson County is being driven by competitive judicial elections. 

Shea Dobson, a former mayor of Ocean Springs, said the line was longer than he’s seen for previous midterms at his polling location, the Ryan Youth Center, when he turned out to cast a ballot on his lunch break. He played a card game on his phone and spoke to a woman about traveling to Europe while they waited in line for over an hour. 

Despite the wait, he said spirits remained high. 

“Everybody seemed pretty nice and just ready to do their civic duty,” he said.

At the Ocean Springs Civic Center, Diana Schmied and her husband also waited for about an hour when they went to vote around 9 a.m. A retired attorney, Schmied estimated the line was just as long when they left the precinct. 

Though the civic center historically sees more voters than other precincts in Ocean Springs, Schmied said there were not enough voting machines and ballot scanners to keep the line moving quickly. 

The long wait impacted a man standing in front of her, Schmied said, who told her he had hip replacement surgery a few years ago. 

“By the time we got up to the building, he was in some pain,” she said. 

Update, 11/3/2026: This article has been updated with information about Democrats filing a court challenge that cites problems in DeSoto County.