The fight is growing over ballot counting in Mississippi’s tight Senate race

National party operatives, lawyers, grassroots activists and content creators are descending on Mississippi to observe the vetting of thousands of provisional ballots in the coming days and to gear up for possible legal challenges over the final results. Mississippi, a state not used to the national spotlight for close elections, now sits at the forefront of a fight that will determine the size of the Democrats’ majority in the US Senate next year. Democrat Scott Colom has a razor-thin lead over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 40 years and no Black person to the Senate since Reconstruction. Both Colom and Hyde-Smith have assembled extensive teams ready to observe and potentially challenge ballot-counting procedures ahead of Mississippi’s December 3 deadline for certifying the results. “We were prepared for this for months,” Colom told reporters Wednesday.