Gaming the system: Absentee votes often pivotal in local elections

Sara Deloach. Patricia Brooks. Judy Lewis.

Candidates who have run for office in Columbus and Lowndes County over the past 40-plus years likely know at least one, if not all, of these women and might have even used their services. The three women, along with others, have built over the years a loyal following of elderly and disabled citizens for whom they provide witness signatures on their absentee ballots -- election after election.

State law allows voters who are 65 and older, or will otherwise be unavailable to vote on election day, to cast absentees in person -- at either a city registrar's office for municipal elections or circuit clerk's office for all others -- or through the mail. Most absentees must be signed and witnessed by a notary public or court clerk. But in cases where voters are temporarily or permanently disabled, or illiterate, anyone at least 18 years old can provide a witness signature on their mail-in absentee ballots.

That's where these women pick up the slack, beating the streets to gather absentee votes -- either as volunteers or as paid agents for a particular candidate.

"I go to people I've been going to for years," said Deloach, noting she has helped elderly and disabled voters with absentees for 45 years. "I know them. They know me. I just go out and assist them on making sure they cast a legal, valid absentee ballot. ... When I go out and help them, they know their vote's going to be counted."

Game changers

Their efforts can change the results of an election.

In the May 2 Democratic primary, Eric Thomas led incumbent Ward 2 councilman Joseph Mickens by a 180-177 margin before absentees were counted, and the two seemed headed for a May 16 runoff. Mickens, however, overshadowed Thomas 178-15 in the absentee tally, earning more in absentees than election-day votes and securing re-election with 54 percent of the total vote.

In the Ward 4 councilman race, incumbent Marty Turner overcame a 76-vote deficit to Frederick Jackson on May 2, using a 111-23 advantage in absentees to place first in the four-candidate primary by 12 votes. Jackson, however, beat Turner two weeks later in a runoff to claim the seat.

The ballots

The Dispatch inspected absentee ballots last week for the May 2 primaries in those two wards, via an open records request. In just those two wards, Brooks signed 32 total ballots and Lewis signed 23. Deloach signed 32 in Ward 4, alone.

More strikingly, Emlis Mickens, wife of Councilman Joseph Mickens, witnessed 30 absentee ballots cast in her husband's race for re-election.

Councilman Mickens told The Dispatch on Thursday his wife volunteered for his campaign, but she and other paid staffers combed the voter rolls to identify areas with disabled citizens where they could canvass for absentee votes.

"Absentees are part of the game," he said. "Those people have the right to vote. And (in a campaign) you have to do your homework."

Still, Mickens said he is never present when an absentee vote is cast and doesn't know either his wife's or staffers' methods for procuring them.

"You'll have to ask them," he said.

The process

For Deloach, the process is simple. Either she contacts voters, or they contact her, to identify who needs an absentee ballot. From there, she visits their home and watches as they call the necessary office -- the city registrar's or the circuit clerk's -- to claim their disability and request an absentee ballot be mailed to them.

Once the ballot arrives, voters call Deloach to come back to their home and she assists them in properly completing it. Sometimes that means explaining the ballot and letting them do the rest. Other times, it means reading them the ballot aloud and allowing them to choose a candidate. Still other times, it means physically helping a voter fill in the bubble by a candidate's name.

"Say I have a voter who has Parkinson's or some other reason where they may have trouble filling it in," Deloach explained. "I always wait until I see which bubble they start to fill in, and then I may guide their hand and help them fill out the rest (of the bubble). But I always make sure they've started it themselves before I help like that."

After she assists, in whatever capacity, she makes sure the voters sign or make their mark on the ballot envelope, then she signs the witness line and the voter mails in the ballot.

Absentees in the mayor's race

Deloach said Mayor Robert Smith paid her to canvass areas throughout the city to witness absentee votes for disabled citizens who might not otherwise get to the polls, meaning she signed dozens more ballots than the 32 she witnessed for the May 2 race in Ward 4.

In the mayor's primary, which featured three Democratic candidates, Smith received 943 of the 1,069 total absentee votes cast. However, Deloach said she refuses to influence voters when she witnesses absentees -- adamantly adding Smith also never asked her to.

"He asked me to do this with the understanding all the votes weren't going to be for him," she said. "Some were. Some weren't. He didn't ask and I didn't tell him.

"I'm not going to jail for any candidate," she added.

As far as pay for her work, Deloach wasn't specific. All she told The Dispatch was it was enough to cover "my gas, my food and my time."

"It wasn't a set amount," she said, noting Smith did not pay her on a per-ballot basis or an agreed-upon lump sum.

Smith, in an emailed statement to The Dispatch, denied paying Deloach at all.

"I did not pay anyone for absentee ballot work in any way in the election," Smith said. "I had volunteers that helped me in many ways during the election, and I am grateful for their assistance. ... Any statements made that I paid for absentee ballot work are incorrect."

The Dispatch could not obtain contact information for Patricia Brooks or Judy Lewis.

It's 'gotten out of hand'

As early as 1987, when Leroy Brooks ran the second time for District 5 Lowndes County supervisor, he learned the value of absentee ballots.

In those days, the ninth-term supervisor said he and a notary public would personally visit homes of disabled voters to witness and notarize their ballots. After that, he's at times had volunteers canvass for absentees -- though he said he never paid them specifically for that purpose and he wouldn't identify those volunteers on the record.

Now, he said, the "absentee game" has "gotten out of hand" and needs to be reined in.

Sometimes, candidates hire the assistance of someone -- like Deloach -- to gather absentee votes. In other cases, an absentee worker may approach a candidate and offer those services.

If a candidate says no, Brooks said the absentee worker will move on to the next candidate, who may accept the help. He hinted that sometimes the absentee workers may even take money from multiple candidates in the same race.

"What I've learned is that if you're paying people to work for you, they tend to go to the highest bidder," he said. "... The downside, as a candidate, is you're out there working like hell to get elected and you start out 200 votes behind.

"You're (basically) at their mercy," he later added, referring to the absentee workers. "It's like three or four people are controlling the whole electoral process."

Brooks backed Jackson in this year's election for Ward 4 councilman. After Turner showed so well with absentees on May 2, Brooks and fellow Jackson endorser, District 41 State Rep. Kabir Karriem, held a press conference before the runoff to say they were "closely watching" absentee voting activity.

"We were trying to suppress some of these absentees," he said. "We were trying to scare some of the ones I know who go out and do it from going out and doing them illegally."

Brooks noted absentees in Columbus and Lowndes County elections come predominantly from black voters.

"You don't see the full-scale effort in the white community," he said. "But in the black community, you see something that works and you try to cultivate it. I have no problem with absentees as long as they're done by the letter of the law. If not for absentees, a lot of these people wouldn't vote."

Beyond being a black phenomenon, it is solidly a Columbus one. The total of 1,069 absentee ballots cast on May 2 dwarfs cities of similar and larger size across the state. Meridian, which is larger than Columbus, notched 402 absentee ballots citywide on May 2, trailed by Starkville (194), Hattiesburg (125), Tupelo (120), Vicksburg (89) and Pascagoula (58).

A better way?

Currently, there's no legal limit on the number of times the same person can provide absentee voter assistance in a particular election, according to the Mississippi Secretary of State's office. However, Mississippi code 23-15-753 disallows paying citizens for their vote.

The same statute also addresses paying people who render assistance to voters, saying, "it shall be unlawful for any person who pays or compensates another person for assisting voters in marking their absentee ballots to base the pay or compensation on the number of absentee voters assisted or the number of absentee ballots cast by persons who have received the assistance."

Penalties for violating the statute include up to five years in prison and an up to $5,000 fine.

Regardless of whether witnessing dozens of absentees -- for pay or otherwise -- is legal, Marty Wiseman, director emeritus for the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, said it's "probably not" ethical.

"There's definitely a loophole in the law that needs to be cinched up," he said. "Absentee ballots are a tempting vehicle to turn elections. ... It's an easy means of GO-TV (get out the vote)."

Wiseman said it's hard to investigate who is or isn't disabled, meaning just about anyone claiming a disability can get an absentee ballot. Also, he said, there are many ways around an absentee ballot witness directly asking someone to vote for a specific candidate.

"I bet there's a lot of nuance there," he said. "There's all kinds of ways to influence someone's preference while you're sitting there watching them vote without telling them to vote for somebody. You could say 'So and so is a really good guy' or 'this person is a Democrat or a Republican, and so am I.'"

To combat the problem, Wiseman suggests enacting early voting in Mississippi to allow citizens to cast ballots in person on voting machines two to three weeks before an election. That would cut down on the need for absentee votes -- except in cases such as military personnel deployed overseas. It's also an effort he supported, and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann endorsed, when Wiseman served on a bipartisan election reform committee in 2016. The Legislature, though, did not pass the measure into law.

"You don't want to disenfranchise people because they are disabled, and that's really the spirit of absentee voting," he said. "But if people had a reasonable way to vote in person without needing absentees (such as a three-week window to vote early on a machine), it would really cut down on it."

Reporter Alex Holloway contributed to this article.