Absentee voting for Mississippi’s upcoming municipal elections has begun, ringing the starting bell as well as bringing up old questions in Columbus about the line between accepted voter assistance and illegal ballot harvesting.
Tuesday was the first day statewide for voters to fill out absentee ballots in 2025’s municipal primary elections. Columbus mayoral candidate Leroy Brooks took the opportunity to hold a press conference at Lowndes County Courthouse warning Columbus candidates to mind the legal lines in their efforts to distribute and collect absentee ballots, a practice particularly common in Columbus that has proven decisive in previous races.
“People have got to feel that these elections have some integrity,” said Brooks, who has served as Lowndes County’s District 5 supervisor since 1983. “I’m well aware of how it’s happened in the past and how they’ve done absentee ballots. And I’m saying this election, if you do it, you run the risk of having charges filed against you. To all candidates that may be indulging in absentee ballots, and I’m well aware they’ve already started collecting lists, … if in fact you break the law and we get a complaint, I will contact the secretary of state and ask that it be sent to the attorney general’s office.”
Brooks is running against Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones in the April 1 Democratic primary. Two independent candidates – Darren Leach and Bill Strauss – await the winner in the June 3 general election.
Brooks has used absentee ballots as part of past campaigns. In 2017, Brooks said he and a notary public would visit homes of disabled voters to witness and notarize their ballots during his campaign in 1987 for the District 5 supervisor seat. In subsequent elections, he sent volunteers out to canvass for absentees, although Brooks said he never paid them specifically for that purpose or has “been involved in fraudulent electoral activity.”
Voting absentee
Absentee ballots are a voting option for a wide variety of residents who can’t come out on election day. Full details are publicly available on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website, which says absentee voting is available for any qualified elector that can’t be in their municipality on election day, electors whose physical disability makes attending difficult or dangerous, anybody 65 or older and any elector who will be working on election day as well as a few other specific cases.
In-person absentee voting is available at the municipal clerk’s offices in Starkville and West Point, as well as the city registrar’s office in Columbus. Offices are open for absentee voting from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, as well as 8 a.m. to noon March 22 and 29 (the last two Saturdays before the primaries).
The deadline to vote absentee in person for the primary is noon March 29.
Clerks will confirm your voter status, address, check your photo ID and ask your reason for requesting an absentee ballot. You will then be given a ballot to fill out, which will be stored after being sealed and signed by both you and the clerk.
Mail-in absentee ballots are more restricted, only available to people temporarily living outside their municipality, anyone whose physical disability makes attending difficult or dangerous, the parents, spouses and dependents of anyone with a physical disability who will be at their residence more than 50 miles from their municipality, anyone 65 or older and previous residents who have been incarcerated for a non-disenfranchising crime.
Eligible voters can contact their municipal clerk’s or registrar’s office to request an absentee ballot be sent to them. The application and ballot must both be signed by an official authorized to administer oaths such as a notary public, unless the voter is physically disabled. Those voters may get a witness signature from anyone older than 18.
Once the witness and voter sign the appropriate lines on the envelope and voter affidavit, it can be sent back to the clerk’s office for processing.
A full schedule for 2025’s elections, including absentee ballots, is available on the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website.
Mailed ballots must be postmarked on or before election day, which is April 1 for this primary, and must be received by the municipal clerk’s office within five business days.
Columbus’ history with absentee collections
Absentee votes have played an outsized role in deciding city elections in Columbus.
In the 2017 primaries, Columbus voters cast 1,069 total absentee ballots, dwarfing numbers from similar sized cities like Meridian (402), Starkville (194), Hattiesburg (125) and Tupelo (120).
That year, absentees swung the races in Wards 2 and 4, where incumbents erased deficits by winning the absentee vote by huge margins.
In 2021, where Columbus saw 862 absentees cast in the general election, incumbent mayor Robert Smith closed a 430-vote deficit to just 66 with absentees against eventual election winner Keith Gaskin.
Brooks, who has publicly criticized what he has seen as absentee “ballot harvesting” operations since 2017, said in his Tuesday conference that he wants this election to mark a turning point in how the city conducts its elections.
“We all know that there have historically been allegations of serious absentee ballot fraud in municipal elections, some of which have had some validity,” he said, though he did not name any specific races or candidates. “Already people are getting lists to go door-to-door soliciting ballots. It is against the law to harvest ballots. … I’ve talked with the secretary of state’s legal division about what the law is. If I find out that people are out collecting absentee ballots illegally, I will sign an affidavit.”
Jones, the other candidate in the Democratic mayoral primary, told The Dispatch he wasn’t aware of Brooks’ press conference, but he doesn’t believe there will be illegal or improper activity in the election.
“Everybody that votes has a legal right to vote,” Jones said. “… If they can vote legally, I don’t have a problem with it.”
Both of the independent challengers for mayor, though neither are running in the primary, said they don’t plan on running any dedicated ballot distribution/collection operations for the general election.
“This is my first time in the race,” Leach said. “I don’t know one way or another. I just know I don’t plan on doing it. … What we’ll do is hope their close relatives help them out, as it’s outlined.”
Strauss agrees.
“Of course, it is an issue that there’s some concern about. I feel our elections are run fair and there are enough people watching out that it won’t be an issue,” Strauss said. “… My plan was not to do much of the absentee balloting. I agree with Brooks on that, we won’t be harvesting ballots. We need to keep these elections above-board with no hint of wrongdoing.”
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