Besides the typically stubborn Gov. Tate Reeves, the main opposition against in-person early voting has been coming from some of the circuit clerks in Mississippi, who have voiced concerns over whether they have the staff to handle it, even though 47 other states have figured that out.
Based on a conversation I had Friday with Daryl Burney, I’m not sure the majority of circuit clerks are really all that much against it.
Burney has been the circuit clerk in Yalobusha County since 2004, and he wanted to talk with me about early voting after reading an editorial I wrote about the subject earlier this month.
Burney said that voters in his county frequently tell him, especially during an election season, that they wish Mississippi had the convenience of early in-person voting.
“If that’s what the people want, I’m willing to do it,” he said.
The biggest advantage to early voting, besides its convenience and the possibility that it would increase voter turnout, is it would reduce the number of absentee ballots that are cast.
Burney estimates that early in-person voting would cut down by about two-thirds the number of absentee ballots his office processes. That might not be such a huge time savings in a small county such as Yalobusha, where about 1,000 absentee ballots are cast in a major election year. It would, though, make a big difference in large counties, where as many as 10,000 absentee ballots are currently being cast, dragging Election Night out well into the next day.
“It’s such a big thing on Election Day to try to get all the resolution boards together to go through those ballots and try to count them that night,” Burney said. “It just delays trying to get our results out.”
Senate Elections Committee Chairman Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, has been the lead legislative champion of early voting. He’s taken flak from Reeves over it, even though the governor is out of step on the issue even with his own national party. England has also run into headwinds in the House, where the governor’s influence appears to be stronger than in the Senate.
Last year, England’s counterpart in the House, Rep. Noah Sanford, R-Collins, derailed the Senate bill that would allow early voting 15 days before the election, saying the issue needed further study, including more input from the state’s circuit clerks, who would have to implement the change. The lawmakers held hearings last fall, during which no information surfaced to suggest that Mississippi was doing the right thing by holding out.
This year, Sanford was not content with killing England’s bill. He has tried to make it worse by substituting expanded absentee voting for in-person early voting.
If Sanford’s amendment were to be enacted, almost anyone could vote absentee, just as with in-person early voting. The difference is there would be more paperwork, and more susceptibility to ballots being thrown out for clerical errors or being challenged because of fraud.
Burney prefers England’s proposal over Sanford’s.
“I think it’s a more secure thing to be voting in our office and showing your ID right here,” Burney said. “I think it’s less opportunity for mistakes.”
Burney said he doesn’t see much fraud occurring with absentee ballots in his county, but he’s heard stories of it happening elsewhere. He doesn’t know whether to put stock in those stories, though.
“You hear everything except the truth and ham frying,” he said, offering a colorful expression that I asked him to repeat a couple of times because I had never heard it before.
Burney would put greater stock in those stories if he spent much time in Leflore County, where the courts over the years have ordered several close elections to be redone, mostly because of hanky-panky with absentee ballots.
On Thursday, the Senate rejected the changes made by the House. The process now moves to a conference committee, where the two committee chairmen and two members from each of their chambers will try to work out their differences.
If in-person early voting prevails, Burney said it would be an adjustment for him and his fellow clerks, but they would adapt. He compares it to another significant change in voting practices in recent years — the requirement that voters produce a photo identification at the polls. That went much more smoothly than the naysayers predicted.
In-person early voting “may take a little getting used to,” Burney said. “Voter ID was something new, and we took that by the horns and were able to do that very well, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem at all now.”
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
