HINDS COUNTY, Miss. (WJTV) – Hinds County officials are still trying to put together what caused an extreme ballot shortage during Tuesday’s General Election. The issue resulted in delays and long lines at polling places throughout Jackson.
On Wednesday, Hinds County Circuit Clerk Zack Wallace was apologetic to the voters. He emphasized that while there was a ballot shortage, voters who were in line were given paper ballots to cast their votes. Wallace hopes those ballots can be certified soon.
“What we tried to do is print out paper ballots to make sure people that was in line get a chance to vote on paper ballot, and then later on, we can transfer the paper ballots to scannable ballots, because we did run out of ballots last night with other issues, printer issues, things like that, but we tried to work it out the best we could. Hopefully, we can try to certify it by next Friday based on the state law,” he said.
The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office reported the following incidents in Hinds County on Election Day:
- One precinct did not open until 7:15 a.m.
- One precinct conducted emergency balloting for an undisclosed amount of time
- Nine precincts ran out of ballots
Absentee ballots are still currently being processed at the Hinds County Courthouse as of Wednesday afternoon.
WJTV 12 News has not heard back from any Hinds County Election Commissioners about what happened at the polls on Tuesday. We asked Hinds County Administrator Kenneth Wayne Jones for a comment, but he said he’s enjoying his day off from work and has no comment.
