Live updates: Some South Mississippi voters wait in line for hours on Election Day

The turnout for today’s election is so large that at some South Mississippi polling places people are waiting more than an hour to vote.

“Escatawpa Community Center 4 hour wait! People have been there since 9:00 just getting to the building to vote,” said a Jackson County voter.

“I voted at Bel Aire Elementary off Klein Road in Gulfport. No line at all. Walked right in and voted,” one voter said on the Sun Herald Facebook page.

Other comments were:

“See me being late to work! Longest line ever!!!”

“The lines are worth waiting in. At least it’s for your freedom and not a bread line.”

“Most in line wearing masks, but many not staying the recommended 6 ft distance from others.”

“People NOT wearing masks . . . it should be mandatory with as many people inside of one place.”

“I see dedication to this country. I am behind an elderly woman that can barely walk waiting in line like a soldier!”

Any problems at the polls?

Secretary of State Michael Watson praised the power companies for getting the electricity back on at polling places and the poll workers for their work to prepare for an election during the coronavirus.

Watson said those who experience or witness a problem at the polls should contact the district attorney’s office in their county or the state attorney general’s office at 601-359-3279. The secretary of state’s office has no enforcement authority to resolve problems, he said, but the office will continue to field calls and send out updates.

Supporting Trump or Biden, quietly

Voters standing in line at Wesley United Methodist Church in Ocean Springs said their main focus on Election Day was the race for the White House. But in a sign of how divisive and tense this election has become, not everyone wanted to go public with support for their candidate.

“It’s dangerous out here, and I’m old,” said one 68-year-old woman, explaining why she didn’t want to be named in the newspaper as a Biden voter.

During the 2016 election, she supported Hillary Clinton. After talking about politics on Facebook, she said, she got threatening messages from friends-of-friends who saw her posts. She didn’t want that to happen again.

She has supported the Democratic candidates for the last several elections and said she’s voting for Biden because she’s pro-choice and because she thinks Biden will do more to help the working class.

A few spots in front of her in line, a 19-year-old woman who is voting for Biden in her first election said she didn’t want to be named because her father, a Republican and Trump supporter, might kick her out of the house.

She’s bothered by Trump’s “blatantly racist, sexist” comments, she said.

“He’s so influential, he should have some kind of filter,” she said.

Elsewhere in line, 55 year-old Tina Farley said she is voting for Trump because she’s able to look past his personality to see someone who shares her views on religious freedom and opposition to abortion.

“Sometimes he gets on my own nerves, and I have to turn it off,” she said of the president. “I believe abortion is murder and I don’t see any way to get past that.”

Another Trump supporter, a 73-year-old man who declined to give his name, said he’s voting for Trump again because of “his leadership abilities and what he’s done for the country and can do.”

Everyone agreed on one thing: the line was unprecedented.

“I’ve never seen a line like this anywhere,” Farley said.

Her husband is eligible to vote absentee but wanted to vote in-person because the couple felt it would be more secure. But they didn’t realize how bad the lines would be. Because he can’t wait outside for potentially hours, Farley said, he’ll probably end up not voting.

Undecided voters

Polls show about half as many Americans were undecided as to who they would vote for president, compared to 2016, and supporters of both major party candidates struggle to understand how anyone could still not have made up their minds.

But among the hundreds waiting in line at Wesley United Methodist Church in Gulf Park Estates were at least two voters in that category.

“When I go in there and look, then I’ll decide,” said Lan Le, a 66-year-old independent.

Twenty-three-year-old Kaleb Nailer, about 45 minutes ahead of Le in the two-hour line, was taking the same approach.

“I’ll be undecided until the moment I walk in there,” he said.

Nailer said that he was frustrated with both the Democrats and the Republicans, and has been “more in the middle throughout the whole process.” He’s considering voting for a third-party candidate or writing someone in, but won’t know for sure until he is looking at the ballot.

“I think both of these parties have done a pretty good job sowing division,” he said.

Le said she has been watching videos of rallies held by President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden and thought that Trump’s appeared larger and more enthusiastic. She’s also getting lobbied by friends and family members in central Vietnam, where she lived until immigrating to the United States in the 1990s.

“A lot of friends and family in Vietnam are waiting for who wins, who loses,” she said.

She’s voted in U.S. elections since 2002, she said, and never seen this level of interest in an American election from her relatives. They’re telling her to support Trump: the president polls well there in part because of his tough talk on China, Vietnam’s much-larger northern neighbor and long-standing military and economic competitor.

Nailer said that the system of checks and balances in the United States government gave him hope that the outcome of this election would not be revolutionary either way.

“Our governmental system isn’t one-dimensional,” he said.

He declined to say who he had voted for in 2016, his first time voting, but said he stood by his choice.

“And I’ll do that this year,” he said, no matter who he ends up voting for.

Using COVID-19 to vote curbside

Jackson County residents are turning out in full force Tuesday to cast their vote.

“We are swamped everywhere,” said Danny Glaskox, chairman of the Jackson County Election Commission. “It looks like we are going to have a higher voter turnout than I have every seen in my 16 years on the job.”

Some voters, he said, “are getting agitated because they have to stand in line but that’s to be expected,”

“Just be patient because we are doing the best we can do,” Glaskox said.

The county hasn’t experienced any major glitches at the polls so far, though Glaskox said they are dealing with some people who are saying they have COVID-19 when they likely don’t have it just to avoid the lines and get curbside service.

“They are using that or some other excuse to get out of a line,” he said. “We know it’s happening and it’s happening all over.”

Circuit Clerk Randy Carney said he expected heavy voter turnout based on the number of absentee ballots with a little over 9,200 people voting absentee this year compared to around 3,000 in the 2016 election.

Jackson County also had a significant increase in the number of new voter registrations.

“I’m blown away by the number of people that are turning out at the precincts,” Carney said.

Unprecedented turnout

“We’ve had people who haven’t voted in 20 years wanting to vote today,” said Connie Ladner, Harrison County circuit clerk. Those whose registration has lapsed are voting affidavit, she said.

One precinct in District 4 didn’t open at 7 a.m., she said. The election commissioner was at the polls, Ladner said, and she sent one of her clerks to help so people voted outside until the polling place opened, she said.

Ladner said she had just returned from visiting the polling places across the county and saw “long, long lines” at polling places at Lyman, the Orange Grove Library, Donal Snyder Community Center in Biloxi and other large voting districts.

Hancock County polls running smoothly

Hancock County Circuit Clerk Kendra Necaise is reporting no problems at the polls, but said the sheer volume of the voters has reached a new milestone this year.

“This is the heaviest voting Hancock County has ever seen before,” Necaise said. “The lines are excessively long and they have been since 7 o’clock this morning when the polls opened, but everything is going smoothly even with the large crowds.”

The Diamondhead east precinct is the largest in Hancock County with 7,200 registered voters and the lines there are wrapped around the building.

“We knew it was going to be like this because our absentee voters have nearly doubled,” she said, with 3,535 residents voting absentee this year compared to 1,911 absentee votes in the 2016 election.

In addition, the county has seen a significant increase in the number of absentee votes by those who are over the age of 65. In the 2016 election, Necaise said, 257 voters over 65 voted absentee and that number jumped to 1,447 absentee votes by that age group this year.

Game on. Election day is here

Election Day dawned sunny and cold, and at 6:30 a.m. 31 people were already in line at the Vancleave North precinct. By the time the polls opened at 7 a.m., the line had swelled to 100. Cars and trucks were parked along both sides of Mississippi 57 and frost was on the roof of the polling place.

Inside it was a little different than other years. Voters donned the plastic gloves that were provided and in this age of the coronavirus, voters placed their photo ID on a Styrofoam plate so the election workers didn’t touch it.

Already one person was voting curbside. One of the voting machines wasn’t operating. Someone who wasn’t active on the election rolls was voting by affidavit.

The line at Vancleave North had shrunk considerably as the morning rush to vote ended. People who left when they saw the long line at 7 a.m. returned at 9 a.m. and found about 20 people ahead of them.

In Biloxi, voters showed up before dawn to wait in line to cast their votes before the crowds started to swell at Lopez School.

The poll workers wore masks, face shields and had the same personal protective gear on hand for residents to use before they cast their votes.

In addition, poll workers gave away pens for voters to mark the ballots so they wouldn’t have to share the same ones in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

With 12 more hours to go, poll workers said they expect crowds all day.

Election need to know

Polls are open today from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. across Mississippi for the 2020 election, with the presidential race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden topping the ballot, followed by a contest for the U.S. Senate between Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democrat Mike Espy.

South Mississippi voters also will find on their ballots Republican Steven Palazzo’s unopposed race for re-election in the 4th District and Mike Randolph’s unopposed bid for re-election to the District 2 seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court, a nonpartisan race.

Depending on where a voter lives, local races also are on ballots, including a nonpartisan race for tax collector in Harrison County that features five candidates. Sample ballots for Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, plus other election information, can be found here.

Precinct lists for the three Coast counties can be found here.

Several statewide initiatives are on the ballot, including a historic vote for an official state flag that would replace the flag with Confederate battle emblem retired this summer by the state Legislature.

A picture of the proposed flag will be on the ballot.

Another initiative asks voters to decide if medical marijuana should be legal. Those who vote “yes” then have two options for legalization: the first added to the ballot by statewide referendum and the second proposed by the state Legislature.

A third initiative would remove a requirement that a statewide candidate wins election by receiving the most votes in a majority of the state’s four House districts and instead require that a statewide candidate wins by receiving a majority of the overall general-election vote.

COVID-19 precautions

With the threat of COVID-19 exposure, early voting has reached record levels in Mississippi and across the country this year. In Mississippi, a voter needs an allowed excuse to avoid the polls.

The only exception allowed for COVID-19 is for voters under physician-imposed quarantine or caring for a dependent under physician-imposed quarantine.

Poll workers will be wearing masks and handing them out to voters. Extra workers will be on hand to sanitize equipment, with social distancing in place where possible. A voter can be asked to remove his or her mask when presenting identification.

Voters need a driver’s license or other valid photo ID to cast ballots.

As soon as they are available, sunherald.com will post election results, vote totals and stories on key races, with real-time coverage as the news happens on election day.

This story was originally published November 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.