Long Lines for Absentee Voting
By Ko Bragg
Monday, November 26, 2018 1:11 p.m. CST
JACKSON — Rukia Lumumba was the last person in a long queue of voters waiting to cast a ballot on the final day of in-person absentee voting on Saturday, Nov. 24. The line snaked from the basement of the circuit-clerk's office outside to the sidewalks. Volunteers passed out water, and the nonprofit organization Pizza to the Polls said via Twitter that it sent 10 boxes of cheese pizza to ease hunger pains.
Lumumba is an attorney and founder of the People's Advocacy Institute, an organization that leads grassroots voter awareness and registration drives. Inside the circuit-clerk's office, she signed her name across the flap of the envelope, and cast her vote in the U.S. Senate run-off between U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy. She basked in the peer-to-peer encouragement, and said when some people in the queue wanted to give up and go home, five more would turn around to emphasize the importance of casting a vote in this midterm election ...
Hinds County is predominately African American and tends to vote Democratic. On Election Day, more than 57,000 people in a county of more than 200,000 voted for Espy, and a little more than 17,000 voted for Hyde-Smith ...
While the long lines made for charming news stories about voter engagement and eye-catching social-media posts, the wait times also pointed to flaws in the state's electoral system. Lumumba saw many people leave the Hinds County Courthouse after hours of waiting because they had to get to work or pick up their kids. Mississippi does not have early voting, and the mail-in process can deter people because the paperwork has to be notarized and stamped. Lumumba said early voting and online voter registration could assuage some of these issues ...
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2018/nov/26/long-lines-absentee-voting-point-engagement-room-i/
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