All missing votes now accounted for in Hinds County. Ballots are still being counted
All of the votes in Hinds County are now accounted for, Hinds County Circuit Clerk Zack Wallace confirmed Thursday morning, but reporting of the vote tally in the county continues to lag behind other counties in the state.
This comes after reports on election night that vote tallies from nearly two dozen precincts, stored on thumb drives, were unaccounted for.
While Wallace said there were "no major problems" on election day, he said "21 precincts were not counted on election day, due to various reasons."
"Nothing was lost," Wallace said. "Some of the poll workers, they did a great job on election day working from seven to seven, but some of them actually got there at six o'clock and stayed until eight. I'm just going to say this, I'm going to assume, just with the day being so long, they just forgot to do certain steps. Nothing was lost. We were able to get all of the precincts before two o'clock yesterday (Wednesday), and we were able to get everything updated."
Vote tallies were stored on thumb drives, which Wallace referred to as "media sticks." This led to one of the reasons the votes were unaccounted for until Wednesday. The media sticks, which were in voting machines at the precincts, were left in them by poll workers and not brought to the county courthouse at the end of the night. Once they realized what had happened, Wallace said poll workers returned to their precincts, retrieved their media sticks and brought them to the courthouse.
"Some poll managers forgot to pull out the media stick and bring it down to the courthouse. I'm not sure exactly how many, out of the 21," Wallace said. "The next morning, we had poll workers who actually brought the media sticks to me, directly to me. They knew exactly where they were. They went back to the precinct that morning, shut down the machines and brought the media stick to me, and it was uploaded."
At other precincts, there were inconsistencies with the color of the sealed bag the media stick is placed in. Most precincts had black bags, while some had blue bags. Wallace said when workers were looking for the media stick to bring it to the courthouse, they were looking for black bags. Once they realized some precincts had blue bags, the media sticks were found.
"Once we found out that there were 21 bags, precincts, that were not counted that night. Some of the poll workers told us where the bags were, and if they had a black bag or a blue bag," Wallace said. "Some of those were located that night, but it wasn't reported to the media or anything."
With 78.8% of votes reported two days after voters arrived at the polls, Hinds County still has less of its estimated vote in than any other county in districts two or three, the two districts the county is split between. Wallace said the only outstanding votes are absentee ballots. There were more than 2,800 absentee ballots in Hinds County, Wallace said.
"The elections commissioners, from my understanding, they are processing the affidavits," Wallace said. "Other counties, I'm going to assume, less absentee votes, less precincts. Hinds County has 108 precincts. You have some counties out there that may have 12 precincts, so that does make a difference."
Wallace said the election will be certified by the state's deadline, Nov. 18, and then his office will begin preparations for any runoffs, which would take place on Nov. 29.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Missing Hinds County votes found, absentee vote counting continues
