McComb Selectman Tommy McKenzie raised concerns at Tuesday’s work session that citizens might have been voting at the incorrect precincts during the June 21 city election and he hopes to see corrective action if that’s the case.
“I’m reluctant to bring this up, but while it’s fresh on my mind, during this last election we had a ton of irregular voter cards sent out with wrong people voting in wrong wards,” he said. “There were several sent the Friday before the election. I just would like to see the city clean that up somehow between now and the next election to prevent any possibility of challenges to elections. We all saw bunches of that.”
Ward 2 Democratic candidate Lynn Martin previously asked for a recount after losing to Republican Matt Codding.
“I understand the process,” McKenzie said. “The county gave us (voter registration) cards and then the city mailed those cards to the people.”
Attorney Carroll Rhodes from Hazlehurst was hired to redraw the ward lines after data from 2020 Census was released in August 2021.
“The county received information from the consultant the city board hired to draw those wards,” McKenzie said. “They gave the county ward lines and said go figure it out. That’s all they had was the ward line. They didn’t have any data to show who moved where. I don’t have a lot of confidence that people are voting in the right place.”
Mayor Quordiniah Lockley said making the voter registration cards was the county’s responsibility.
“All cards were issued by the county circuit clerk’s office,” he said. “It was just that we had to mail them out. But that was the circuit clerk’s responsibility.”
McKenzie said he agreed, but it was the city’s responsibility to make sure those voter registration cards were correct. He specifically said a McComb resident who lived in the same house for 30 years was unable to vote because he was not on the voter roll.
After the meeting, Pike County Circuit Clerk Roger Graves said candidates had the opportunity to be part of the process.
“We did the very best we could with redistricting,” he said. “We invited anyone that was running to look at the map and see if we had placed someone in the wrong ward to let us know and we would correct it before the election.
“We did everything we could. We did the best we could. I’m very proud of what we did because we spent a lot of time trying to make sure everything was right.”
Lockley and City Administrator David Myers said Graves’ office did a good job putting the new voter registration cards together.
“I think Roger is very much aware of that and he’s doing his best to make sure that in any future elections, because we do have some coming up, that everybody will be where they’re supposed to,” Lockley said.
“To Mr. Graves’ credit, he’s done a good job,” Myers said in agreement. “Of course, it’s not 100%. There’s going to be some issues like we just talked about. But I get it, selectman. We’ll convey that message to Roger.”
“I think it should be 100%,” McKenzie replied.
Lockley noted that the city had little time to redistrict after receiving the Census data.
“What we have to understand is that we were put in a very tight timeframe,” he said. “When the Census kept moving the date back, they moved it from one date until another date. And we did not get the final numbers until August (2021), which created a problem for us to get redistricting done by the time we start qualifying for elections. As I told Roger, I understand you did the best you could with this short period of time. Because most cities have a year or two before they have another election.
And they have time to work out, work through and make sure 100%, as he’s talking about. But we had a short window. And trying to make sure everything was done in that short window, I think they did their best to make sure everyone was where they were supposed to be with that short window.”
McKenzie agreed, but still said it was critical to fix the voter registration cards in the future, especially since some candidates won by a small margin.
“I suspect that the ward lines may not be drawn correctly, too, but that’s on data that I received,” he said. “But I just would like to maybe see us take a re-look at that.”
