Scott Colom Makes History With Mississippi Senate Win, CNN Projects

Résumé détaillé

Colom became Mississippi's first Democratic Senate winner since 1982 and its first Black popularly elected senator.

Scott Colom will become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi since John C. Stennis in 1982, CNN projected Wednesday, in a historic victory that would also make him the first Black Mississippian popularly elected to the chamber.

Colom, a local prosecutor, unseated Republican incumbent Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. The victory comes more than a week after midterm elections that saw Democrats win control of both chambers of Congress. As of Wednesday night, 98.6 percent of ballots had been tallied, with Colom leading Hyde-Smith 49.2 percent to 48.7 percent. His lead accounted to roughly 4,500 votes. Despite CNN's projection, the Associated Press has not yet called the race.

Newsweek reached out to both campaigns by email for comment on Wednesday evening.

The unusually long wait for a result was driven in part by thousands of outstanding affidavit ballots, Mississippi’s term for provisional ballots cast when a voter’s eligibility or identification cannot immediately be verified. Because the Senate race was separated by only a few thousand votes, those ballots had the potential to affect the outcome. Voters who needed to resolve identification problems had until Tuesday evening to do so, the same day that qualifying mail-in absentee ballots had to arrive. Local election officials then had until Friday to finish counting and certify their results.

There will also not be a recount. Unlike most states, in Mississippi, there is no standard statewide procedure automatically producing a recount when the margin falls below a certain threshold.

A candidate could instead investigate potential voting irregularities and use that evidence to challenge the inclusion or exclusion of ballots in court. Because state law does not provide a specific process for contesting the race, the dispute could ultimately reach the U.S. Senate, which has constitutional authority to judge the elections and returns of its own members.

It is unclear if Hyde-Smith plans to contest the…

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