Adam Ganucheau

The Clarion-Ledger

Hinds County Election Commission Chairwoman Connie Cochran admitted Monday that she broke the law by not ordering the required number of ballots for last week's general election.

Cochran also said that election officials were still tallying affidavits and absentee ballots, and the Hinds County election results would likely not be certified until Friday — the maximum 10 days after the election, as set forth by state law.

The secretary of state's office confirmed that state law requires election commissioners to order enough ballots for 75 percent of registered voters to cast votes.

In Hinds County, there are 155,912 registered voters, so the total number of printed ballots required by law was 116,934. Last week, Cochran said she only had 58,350 ballots on hand — less than half of what was required by law.

"If it had rained, we would have been fine, but the weather was perfect, and we had a lot of people come out to vote," Cochran said. "It's inexcusable to run out of ballots. All I can do is apologize to people who call and let them know it won't happen again."

Cochran, who has held her elected position for 22 years, said each ballot cost 25 cents to print, and if she had printed the required number of ballots, the county would have thrown away about $30,000 in unused ballots.

As of Monday afternoon, about 200 Hinds County ballots had not been added to the unofficial totals released last week, including 53 military affidavits and damaged ballots unable to be scanned automatically, 19 affidavits from voters who came to polls without proper photo identification and more than 100 absentee ballots which were not properly accounted for by precinct workers.

Cochran said that while she and other election commission employees worked through the weekend and will work through the holiday today, the election results will not be certified until late this week.

"Since we have the holiday (Tuesday), the county resolution board won't meet until Wednesday evening to count the votes that were unable to be scanned," she said. "We might have it done by Thursday, but it will probably be Friday morning before we certify."

While the estimated 200 uncounted ballots will not yield major changes on any of the announced unofficial election results, many community leaders and citizens are concerned with both the delay in certifying the results and the reported issues from Tuesday.

Hinds County District 1 Supervisor Robert Graham told The Clarion-Ledger last week that he would ask the board to assign a legal team to investigate the matter, but Hinds County District 3 Supervisor Peggy Hobson-Calhoun said Tuesday that the county board has no authority to penalize election commissioners. Instead, she said, any investigation and punishment falls on the shoulders of the Attorney General's office.

"This was just very, very unfortunate," Hobson-Calhoun said. "Election commissioners are elected officials and are accountable for their own actions. This experience has undoubtedly put the commissioners on alert that they should follow the (state) statutes."

Cochran said she will be ordering the required number of ballots for the Nov. 25 runoff.

Contact Adam Ganucheau at aganucheau@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7303. Follow @GanucheauAdam on Twitter.