Mississippi’s General Runoff Election Day is Tuesday. The Nov. 26 ballot features runoffs in 49 counties, including Copiah and Jefferson.

To familiarize yourself with the upcoming election, visit the My Election Day portal to receive election information tailored to your specific address.

Polls for the General Runoff Election will open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Any voter in line at 7:00 p.m. is legally entitled to cast a ballot.

Problems at the polls observed by State observers or otherwise reported to the Secretary of State’s Elections Division will be referred to the authorities, including the Attorney General’s Office or the appropriate District Attorney’s Office. The Secretary of State’s Office has no enforcement authority over election-related issues.

For questions, contact the Elections Division at ElectionAnswers@sos.ms.gov, call the Elections Hotline at 800-829-6786, or visit YallVote.ms.

The last day to absentee vote in-person was Saturday, Nov. 23. All mail-in absentee ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 26 and received in Circuit Clerk Offices by Dec. 5. Voters who case an affidavit ballot by reason of voter ID must present an acceptable form of photo ID to their Circuit Clerk’s Office by Dec. 5. Voter ID is required to cast a ballot.

 

Who’s on the ballot?

Voters in central Mississippi, the Delta, and Gulf Coast areas will vote to resolve two judicial races in which no candidate received the majority needed in the Nov. 5 General Election to avoid a runoff.

The races are for seats on the State’s two highest courts — the State Supreme Court and State Court of Appeals. Judges on each panel serve 8-year terms, the longest of any Mississippi elected official.

In the Supreme Court race, Justice Jim Kitchens seeks a third term in District 1/Central District. He is the more senior of the Court’s two presiding justices, placing him next in line to serve as chief justice. He faces challenger Jennifer Branning, a Republican state senator in her third term. Branning was the top vote-getter in the general election, with 42% of the vote to 36% for Kitchens, with the rest split among three other candidates.

The courts are officially nonpartisan, but partisan fault lines have formed nonetheless in the Supreme Court race, with Democratic areas in the competitive district largely supporting Kitchens in the Nov. 5 election and Republican ones backing Branning. This was similar to the voting pattern in Kitchens’ 2016 reelection bid, when he won the support of the state’s Democratic areas and his opponent mainly drew support from Republican areas.

Branning has branded herself a “constitutional conservative” and rails against “liberal, activists judges” and “the radical left.” She has the endorsement of the state Republican Party.

Kitchens has issued dissents in high-profile death row appeals, including a September case in which he sided with a man on death row for a murder conviction where a key witness had since recanted her testimony. In 2018, he dissented in a pair of death row cases dealing with the use of the drug midazolam in state executions. Kitchens has the endorsement of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund, a civil rights organization.

Branning has had a sizable financial advantage over the incumbent since launching her campaign in February, thanks largely to a $250,000 personal loan she made to her campaign.

In the Court of Appeals race, Amy St. Pe’ and Jennifer Schloegel were the top two finishers in a competitive three-way contest on Nov. 5 to replace outgoing Judge Joel Smith. St. Pe’ placed first in the general election with 35% of the vote, followed by Schloegel with 33%. The Court’s 5th District is on the Gulf Coast in the southeastern corner of the state.

 

The Associated Press contributed to this story.