City of Hattiesburg mayoral race a giant fustercluck

[Scipio]

Municipal elections were on Tuesday.  We had five candidates in the mayoral race, but only two of any consequence.  Tuesday night, after counting the absentee ballots, the incumbent was ahead by 33 votes.  The challenger, a two-term councilman, was second.  There were 115 affidavit ballots to be counted.

Yesterday, they went through about 90 affidavit ballots, verifying the existence of persons who voted by affidavit as registered voters.  Only 38 were accepted.  Overnight, city hall and the city hall vault were left unlocked with the affidavit ballots inside the vault.  The seal on the ballot box was not tampered with.

Today, one of the affidavit ballots was reinstated when the voter marched into city hall with her voter registration card, showing she'd been registered in the city since summer, 2012.

Until all the affidavit ballots are reviewed and authenticated or thrown out, none of them can be counted.

Check twitter hashtag #haelex for the juicy details.  I'd link a news story, but our local Gannett paper has told me that I'm out of free views of articles.

[Eddie Teach]

Do you have anything to do with the vote-counting process?

[fhdz]

Do you have anything to do with the vote-counting process?

One for you; one for me. One for you; two for me.

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Do you have anything to do with the vote-counting process?

I have nothing to do with anything, since I have a city job.  But this whole thing is flipping hilarious.

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Have you ever wanted to watch the live feed of an election contest?  Starring a black male lawyer named Precious Martin, and a white lawyer named Malcolm Jones?

http://www.wdam.com/story/22909583/live-video

Also, #haelex on Twitter.  The Judge and two lawyers for the Mayor fell asleep this afternoon.