Mississippi

A crawler trained on a midterm state expects governor, cabinet, legislature, and county officers on the 2026 ballot — Mississippi elects all of them in 2023 and 2027. The even year carries federal races, the nonpartisan bench, school boards, and specials. A coverage model keyed to the national cycle finds phantom races here and misses the real ballot entirely.

March's primary was administered, canvassed, and declared by each county's party executive committees — candidate qualifying, ballot printing, poll workers, contests, all of it (§23-15-263). November belongs to the elected five-member county election commission. Same office, same year, two administering bodies with two different canvass chains — and the voter roll belongs to a third: the circuit clerk is the registrar.

A federal court held the 1987 Supreme Court district map violates VRA §2 and enjoined the regularly scheduled 2026 election — the SoS refused all qualifying, and the one justice due to run couldn't file by the February 2 deadline. Then Louisiana v. Callais gutted the ruling's foundation and the Fifth Circuit vacated it in May — after qualifying had closed. No special was ordered, qualifying never reopened, and the incumbent holds over. A static race list is wrong in both directions.

Every nonpartisan race on the general ballot — judges, school boards, specials — goes to a December 1 runoff if nobody clears a majority, under an interval that just changed from three weeks to four (SB 2144, effective 2025). County returns reach the SoS November 13, the judicial determination lands November 23, and the state doesn't declare general results until December 3 — runoff declarations run to December 31. In 2023, forty-nine counties held general-election runoffs.

No statewide election-night reporting exists — the SoS results page is a post-canvass archive, published days to weeks later. A bill to build a portal passed the House 120–0 in February 2026 and died without a Senate floor vote. Night-of numbers come from 82 counties posting on their own cadence — courthouse doors, county sites, wire stringers — with acknowledged rural coverage gaps.

Mississippi has no early voting and no no-excuse absentee — bills keep dying, most recently a procedural kill on the session's last day. Mail applications need notarization unless the voter is disabled. But the count runs long the other way: ballots postmarked by election day count if received within five business days, a rule the U.S. Supreme Court upheld 5–4 in June 2026. Totals legally grow until November 10.

Ten counties — Hinds, Harrison, Bolivar among them — are split into two judicial districts with two county seats, two courthouses, and separately maintained records. An entity resolver keyed one-county-one-courthouse double-counts or half-counts them, and election notices can be filed per district within a single county.

Judicial races skip the primaries entirely and appear only on the November general ballot, nonpartisan by statute since 1994 — the exact inversion of Florida, where judges are decided at the August primary. But the taxonomy splits twice: justice court judges and constables are partisan and run with the county cycle in odd years. 'Judge' is two office classes here, on two calendars, under two ballot rules.