An election lawyer fresh from a deep-red state’s ballot count says one embattled MAGA senator has hit a dead end.
Norm Eisen, the former White House ethics czar who served as counsel to House Democrats during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, told progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen in a Saturday episode of his YouTube show that Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) has no realistic path left to beat Democratic challenger Scott Colom. “It’s a mathematical impossibility at this point for Senator Hyde-Smith,” Eisen said.
Eisen, who said he spent three days in Mississippi and planned to head back the next day, pegged Colom’s lead as “approaching a 3,000-vote margin.” He compared the count to the 2000 Florida recount he worked on, when the gap bounced around in the hundreds.
“We’re well out of that space now, and it’s really moved out of the margin of contestation,” he said.
The race has not been called. Straight Arrow News reported that Colom, a district attorney, was ahead by just over 1,000 votes as of Thursday. The outlet noted that Mississippi has no automatic recount, so a losing candidate would have to go to court after certification. A Colom win would hand Mississippi its first Democratic senator since 1982 and its first Black senator since Reconstruction, the outlet reported.
Eisen flagged what he called “two concerning episodes” from Republicans. One was a letter he described as “full of misrepresentations.” It asked for affidavit ballots, Mississippi’s version of provisional ballots, to be handled differently.
“You open the affidavit ballot, if the address matches, it’s approved for the count. That’s Mississippi law,” Eisen said.
The other was a press conference where a former U.S. attorney representing Republicans hinted at a challenge without committing to one.
“They got the losing hand,” Eisen said. “When it’s big like that, you know you’re going to lose. Do you really want to go on a kamikaze mission?”
Eisen laid out the remaining deadlines. Voters who lacked photo ID have until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 10, to show it at their circuit court. Counties certify Nov. 13, and the state must declare results by Dec. 3.
The county certification date is “likely when you’re going to get the AP call and the networks will call the race for Scott,” Eisen predicted.
He also tore into Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican. “The worst thing he did this year was purge the voter list,” Eisen said, adding, “That’s why we have these affidavit ballots.”
Eisen credited a string of legal wins against Trump. He said that after his side “knocked the stuffing legally out of Donald Trump at the Supreme Court on Monday night, he gave up the sabotage and he was wiped out by the blue wave.”
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