JACKSON, Miss.- Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann held a press conference to discuss the voter turn out for Mississippi Monday in the Capitol City.
The state lit up red on Nov. 8th as the votes were tallied and Mississippi went to the Republican party, nominating Donald Trump for President of the United States of America.
Mississippians cast 1,209,357 votes on Election Day. That was out of a total of 1,848,991 that were eligible to vote. That is about 14 percent lower than the 2012 election, or 75,000 votes.
112,967 absentee ballots that were asked for and 104,895 of those were officially cast. Again, slightly less than the 2012 election.
However, it was a historic year for voters to show up with their IDs. 99.9 percent of voters brought an ID with them to vote, out of the over 1.2 million that voted only 560 did not.
“This time Mississippians came with their ID, they came without any federal observers, they showed up, and cast their ballots in a peaceful election,” said Hosemann.
Historically, Mississippi was originally one of six states that were part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This year there were no federal monitors in the state. The U.S. Department of Justice sent observers to 28 different states, but not Mississippi. Many of the original states in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were also observed, but not Mississippi.
Attempted security hacks were down from 4-5,000, to less than 3,000 this year.
“There were only 138 security breech attempts on Election Day,”said Hosemann.
1,575 phone calls were made on election day, 60-70 percent were individuals still asking if they were registered to vote, and where they could go vote.
Mississippi will be nominating Donald Trump for President. Those six electoral votes the state holds will be cast on December 19th at the Capitol and it is open to the public.
“But the real story about November 8th’s election is the fact that Mississippians showed up, with an ID in a free and fair election with just a minimal amount of confusion…we’ve turned that page in history and we aren’t going back,” said Hosemann.
