BREAKING: The author of this Dispatch letter to the editor wants to see “data” from Secretary of State (SOS) Michael Watson. Information is critical to understanding.
We’re happy to provide answers. The seven counties with over 100% registration are: Amite, Bolivar, Holmes, Humphreys, Jefferson, Leflore, and Sharkey. (Had the author cared enough to go to the SOS’s website, he would have seen this. Why attack without first taking the initiative to inform yourself? [It could be that the political position of the adversary was not aligned to the authors?])
The author says “I would think that if seven of our 82 counties had 100 percent (or more!) of their voters registered, it would have skewed the state percentage much higher. I have heard a lot of politicians lately make unsupported data claims to support personal positions, so I would like to see some support for this one.”
Lowndes is at 85% of the population registered to vote. Television news station WDAM7 interviewed Dr. Joe Weinberg, associate professor of political science at the University of Southern Mississippi. Weinberg said Mississippi actually has a higher percentage of registered voters than the national average.
While the author is concerned about purging the voter rolls, he can rest assured that, for the most part, the election commissioners in Lowndes have not been maintaining the voter rolls.
“Your commissioners have to do their job and clean these rolls up,” said MS Secretary of State, Michael Watson. “The problem arises when rolls are not properly maintained.” He continued telling the crowd that if a person doesn’t vote in two federal elections, that individual can be purged. The name of the purged person remains on the roll, he said, just in purged status. They can still vote by affidavit if they do show up at the polls.
But that didn’t happen in the Columbus municipal elections.
A voter with the last name Brown had not voted in twenty years – not even in the November 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But Brown voted in the Ward 4 primary. Brown’s wife called Brenda Williams, the now-former city registrar, and requested a mail-in ballot by telephone, saying her husband was disabled (on election day) and needed to vote by mail. She also requested the ballot be mailed to a different address than where Mr. Brown is registered to vote, an address that, at the time, they also claimed property tax homestead exemption. Why was he not sent an affidavit ballot instead? Did anyone notice that it appeared that Brown’s wife filled out the ballot in its entirety? It’s worth noting that Brown’s wife is a daughter of a county election commissioner.
