Months ago, long before absentee voting for the Nov. 3 election began, Clay County Circuit Clerk Kim Brown Hood was notified by the Secretary of State’s office to expect a lot more people to vote by absentee than during the 2016 presidential election.
“We were told before the start to estimate 25 percent more absentee votes,” Hood said.
While Hood isn’t sure what the final absentee voting numbers were in her county in 2016, she’s pretty sure the numbers are substantially higher than 25 percent.
“We’ve had more absentee votes than I ever imagined,” she said Monday.
With seven days to go before the election, 1,264 Clay County voters have already cast their absentee ballots, some by mail, most by in-person voting, which has kept her office extremely busy for weeks now.
What’s happening with absentee ballots in Clay County is hardly an anomaly.
According to a Secretary of State’s Office update Monday, 169,000 Mississippians have cast absentee ballots, 58,000 more than in 2016. That’s a 52-percent increase, more than double the projections.
Oktibbeha County Circuit Clerk Tony Rook estimated 2,500 voters have turned in absentee ballots this year, an increase of 56 percent over the 1,600 absentee ballots cast in 2016.
As of Monday afternoon, Lowndes County Circuit Clerk Teresa Barksdale reported 3,071 absentee ballots cast. In 2016, there were 2,304 absentee ballots cast in the county.
Barksdale suggested those numbers will continue to swell in the remaining week of voting.
“Definitely,’ she said. “Just today (Monday) we had 252 absentee ballots cast. It was a steady stream all day. I expected that to continue through the week.”
The deadline to cast an in-person absentee ballot is noon Saturday. Mail-in absentees must be postmarked by Nov. 3.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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