Mississippi’s new voter identification law endured its first test during Tuesday’s Congressional primaries, having little impact on voters in Pike County, election officials reported.
A state law enacted in 2012 requires voters to present a driver’s license or other government-issued photo ID at the polls. It does, however, allow a person without ID to vote by affidavit ballot, which is counted if the person verifies his or her identification in-person at an election clerk’s office within five days.
In Pike County, only 12 affidavit ballots were cast strictly due to people who lacked a photo ID on Tuesday.
“Those 12 are the ones everybody cares about,” Pike County Circuit Clerk Roger Graves said. “That’s what’s making history.”
Those affidavit ballots are expected to have little to no effect on the number of votes in Pike County, as about 4,919 ballots, including absentee and curbside ballots, were cast on Tuesday.
Graves said he received no reports of problems at the polls due to a lack of voter identification.
Poll workers at Precinct 9 in Magnolia said there were a few voters who simply forgot to bring an ID, but all were able to return with one in time to vote.
The voter ID law created much debate between supporters who said it would prevent people from voting under fraudulent identities and opponents who said it would limit votes from minorities, the elderly and the poor.
Voter identification took a back seat as other concerns of Pike County’s election commissioners began developing Tuesday night.
A bag of memory cards containing the electronic ballots from Precinct 23 went temporarily unaccounted for at the election center and were feared lost. After about 15 minutes of searching, however, the commissioners located the bag on a shelf where it was mistakenly placed among other identical bags.
Prior to the incident with the misplaced bag, a poll worker from Summit’s Precinct 16 accidentally left a memory card at the polling location and had to return to retrieve it.
Graves said that although the new ID law seemed to pose very few problems on Tuesday, voters must keep in mind that the midterm Congressional primaries are contests that historically draw little turnout
“The real test will come next year during the state and federal elections, and then the presidential election,” Graves said.
