Try and Stop Us Digest — November 9, 2026

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Mississippi's Senate Race Comes Down To The Last Ballots, With Lawyers In All 82 Counties

Democratic and Republican lawyers have descended on all 82 Mississippi counties as officials count the last ballots in a Senate race that Democrat Scott Colom now leads by 2,574 votes. The Guardian: Both sides are trading sharp legal letters about counting procedures. The NRSC demanded that counties separate and preserve all affidavit ballots, and Colom's legal counsel answered that the demands "have no basis in Mississippi law" and told counties not to segregate accepted affidavit ballots from other paper ballots. On Friday the NAACP sent its own letter urging election commissions to "strictly adhere to state law during the post-election ballot counting and certification process." Mississippi has no automatic recount law, and a recount can only happen if a court orders one in response to a lawsuit against a county or its election commission, so any fight would play out county by county. Nov. 10 is the deadline for affidavit voters who lacked photo ID to present it, and the last day for mail ballots to arrive and be counted.

Mississippi voters overcame one of the nation's most restrictive voting systems to bring Colom within reach of an upset, but the state has also quietly eliminated its mail ballot curing rule. Democracy Docket / Democracy Docket: Turnout jumped 35% over the last midterm, with more than 950,000 votes counted as of Thursday morning compared with 710,000 total in 2022, driven especially by Black Mississippians angered by the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Mississippi is one of just three states with no early in-person voting and one of 13 that require an excuse to vote by mail. In August, Secretary of State Michael Watson's (R) office deleted the regulation that let mail voters fix problems with their ballots, and a spokesperson confirmed there are "no steps for curing a mail-in." Civil rights groups have been instructing voters how to cure their ballots using the old rule, which is still published on the secretary of state's website.

Voters Rejected Republicans Who Wanted To Run Elections And Restrict Voting

Democrats flipped secretary of state offices in Georgia, Indiana and Ohio and will run elections in nearly every battleground state, while Republicans flipped none. Bolts: Democrat Penny Reynolds Brown, a former Fulton County judge, won Georgia's secretary of state race by 12 percentage points over Republican Tim Fleming, who has baselessly alleged that mail voting produces fraud. She is the first Democrat to hold the job in 20 years and the first Black woman ever elected to it. Democrats also held Secretary of State offices in Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, defeating Republicans who support voting restrictions and, in Arizona and Nevada, are vocal election deniers. Of the 17 states with the tightest 2024 presidential margins, the only one where Republicans are on track to control election administration is North Carolina, and only because of a Republican power grab in late 2024 to seize control from the Democratic governor. "The jig is up for a lot of fear tactics," said Allison Russo, the Democrat who won Ohio's secretary of state race and will replace Republican Frank LaRose. Bolts notes that secretaries of state generally cannot unilaterally change election law, which rests largely with legislatures, but Democratic gains in statehouses make reforms more feasible.

Voters also removed some of the country's most prolific architects of voting restrictions, including Rep. Bryan Steil, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, former RNC chair Michael Whatley and Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen. Democracy Docket: Steil, chair of the House Administration Committee and lead author of the Make Elections Great Again Act, lost his Wisconsin seat to Democrat Mitchell Berman. Rep. Chip Roy, who drove the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act, is leaving Congress after losing the Republican primary runoff for Texas attorney general. Kobach, who drafted Kansas's documentary proof-of-citizenship law, lost to Democrat Chris Mann by just over one percentage point. Paxton, whose office repeatedly fought in federal court to defend Texas's restrictive 2021 election law, SB 1, lost the U.S. Senate race to Democrat James Talarico.. Whatley, who built the RNC's national election litigation operation, lost North Carolina's Senate race to former Gov. Roy Cooper. Petersen, who sued Arizona's secretary of state over the state's Elections Procedures Manual, lost the attorney general race to Kris Mayes by roughly 11 percentage points.

Trump Returns To Election Denial Days After Pledging To Accept The Results

Days after pledging on election night to accept the results, Trump reposted claims that the midterms were manipulated and declared Alaska's undecided Senate race "OVER." Democracy Docket / The Daily Beast: On Saturday Trump reposted several Truth Social posts that used cherry-picked data to suggest the results were manipulated. One pointed to uniform Democratic gains across the country, though it excluded some races that didn't fit the pattern, and declared, "A pattern this even demands answers at the ballot level: paper ballot hand counts, poll-book check-ins against votes counted, and voter files showing who actually turned out." Another questioned Democrat James Talarico's win over Republican Ken Paxton in Texas' Senate race, asking, "Honest question. Does anyone believe this at all?" None of the claims offer evidence of irregularities and Democratic vote totals rose sharply in red, blue and purple states on Tuesday. In a separate Saturday post, Trump insisted Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan was "leading substantially" in Alaska even though Democrat Mary Peltola is ahead, adding the votes for Daniel J. Sullivan and Gerald Heikes to Sullivan's total and writing, "The Alaska Race is OVER. Dan Sullivan WON, BY A LOT!" Under Alaska's ranked-choice system votes don't automatically transfer to the candidate Trump wants, the tabulation is not scheduled until Nov. 18.

Trump made Stephen Miller his chief of staff, a sign he plans to ramp up confrontation and conspiracy theories. Reuters / The Daily Beast: Trump administration officials and other Republicans told Reuters that Miller, who replaces Susie Wiles, is expected to continue the aggressive immigration crackdown, amplify cultural conflicts and give no ground to a Democratic-controlled Congress, with wavering Republicans facing more pressure to stay in line. "This signals the administration is going to have a fighting-from-a-bunker approach the last two years," said Dan Eberhart, a Trump donor and energy executive. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a retiring occasional Trump critic, said most of his House peers view the appointment as "doubling down on a failed strategy." Miller drafted part of the speech Trump delivered at the Ellipse before rioters stormed the Capitol, was questioned by the House Jan. 6 committee about his role in encouraging the "Stop the Steal" movement, and has already called Alaska's Senate race "one of the most egregious attacks we have seen on the integrity of American elections.” Trump also ordered the Justice Department to "look into" Democrats he accused of sending "threatening letters" to Republican donors and other Trump allies.

Three DOJ Officials Resign After Midterm Losses, Including Trump's "Grand Conspiracy" Prosecutor

Three top Justice Department officials have resigned since the midterms, including Jason Reding Quiñones, the prosecutor behind Trump's "grand conspiracy" probe, which never produced a prosecution. CNN / Democracy Docket: Quiñones, the U.S. attorney in Southern Florida, was pushed out by department leadership, according to CNN, after promising he could bring a case within months against former officials involved in probes of Trump and failing to deliver. John Eisenberg, who led the National Security Division, and Harmeet Dhillon also resigned. Quiñones’ investigation targeted James Comey, John Brennan and Cassidy Hutchinson but did not successfully prosecute any of its targets, and Joe diGenova, a Trump ally who played a key role in the 2020 election subversion scheme and was appointed in April to lead it, resigned in September. Democrats are not likely to lose interest in investigating Quiñones and Dhillon. "Jason Reding Quiñones will forever be known as this president's Don Quixote for tilting at the windmill of the so-called grand conspiracy," said Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection.

In The States

ARIZONA — Arizona voters rejected Prop. 144, the GOP-referred measure to require ID for mail voting, and its chief backer lost his own race. Votebeat: With 89% of the expected vote reporting Thursday evening, 53% of voters had voted no, per the Associated Press. The Republican legislature sent the constitutional amendment to the ballot in an eleventh-hour vote. It would have required all voters, including those who vote by mail, to show ID, and included a provision suggesting courts should use a lower standard of review for future election laws' burden on voters, making restrictive voting laws harder to overturn. Many of the state's election officials opposed it, arguing it was meant to hobble mail voting, which is wildly popular in Arizona. Rep. Alex Kolodin, the measure's primary backer in the legislature and the GOP nominee for secretary of state, also lost on Tuesday. Opposition chair Randy Keating called it "one of the greatest political longshot victories in Arizona history."

COLORADO — Lauren Boebert's campaign is alleging "very unusual voting patterns" while trailing Democrat Eileen Laubacher by more than 3,000 votes. The New Republic: Boebert's attorney, Scott Gessler, said the campaign expects "this election to head to a recount, one way or another," claiming votes had been "trending" her way since election night. As of Friday morning, with 97% reporting, Laubacher led 48.75% to 47.94%, a margin of 3,069 votes, more than three times the 921-vote threshold for an automatic recount. The campaign could still pay for one. Colorado GOP chair Craig Steiner urged Republican voters to cure any affidavit ballots, saying "every cured ballot matters in a race this close."

COLORADO — Colorado Republicans' measure to make mid-decade redistricting harder failed. Colorado Sun: The AP called Amendment 86 on Friday with 53.11% of tabulated votes in favor and 46.89% opposed, short of the 55% required for a constitutional amendment. It would have required the state's independent redistricting commission to reconvene, hold public hearings and approve any congressional map redrawn outside the normal 10-year process, with court review. Republicans pursued it as a pre-emptive move after the Colorado Supreme Court unanimously blocked a Democratic redistricting ballot measure in June.

GEORGIA — Georgia's secretary of state is investigating a county that failed to upload hundreds of votes, a mistake caught by post-election checks that flipped a state House race. CBS Atlanta: Officials found about 388 more voters checked in at polling places on Tuesday than ballots Seminole County had reported. The county's elections board discovered a memory card had never been uploaded. With those votes included, Republican incumbent Gerald Greene leads Democrat Harry James by 262 votes in House District 154. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the safeguards worked: "Our office identified a significant discrepancy, alerted county officials, and uncovered a failure to properly upload election results." His office will investigate how the card was overlooked. County results must be certified by Monday.

KANSAS — Kansans voted out Kris Kobach, who helped make illegal-voting claims a national issue, and elected Democrat Chris Mann attorney general. The New York Times / KCUR: Chris Mann won by a bit over one percentage point, and Kobach had not conceded after Mann declared victory Wednesday.. Kobach helped make claims of widespread illegal voting a national issue years before Trump, and Trump tapped him to lead a voter-fraud panel in his first term. As attorney general, Kobach predicted "likely in the thousands" of noncitizens voting in Kansas; his office has found four cases. Kobach has not alleged fraud in this election.