OurTupelo

Amid a hectic week of crafting a multi-billion dollar state budget, most of the Capitol on Wednesday paused business to witness the unveiling of former House Speaker Philip Gunn’s portrait that will hang in the entrance to the House chamber. 

Gunn is a Republican who represented the Clinton area in the House for 20 years. For 12 of those years, he served as speaker, one of the most powerful positions in state government. He was the first Republican speaker since Reconstruction. 

The painting features Gunn sitting in an armless olive-green chair with brass rivets. In the upper-left corner, it features a painting of Mississippi’s newly changed state flag. As speaker, Gunn helped lead the charge for Mississippi to scrap its former flag containing a Confederate battle emblem and adopt its current flag. 

“When I first saw it, it was like looking in the mirror,” Gunn told reporters. 

The painting does not show Gunn wielding a gavel or inside the House chamber, which is the typical fashion for portraits of past speakers. Jason Bouldin, the portrait artist, said he chose to showcase Gunn in that fashion to portray his overall sense of generosity and calmness. 

In addition to changing the state’s flag, Gunn will likely be remembered for leading the House in its passage of a bill that restricted abortion in the state. That legislation led to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a constitutional right to an abortion. 

The former speaker said other items he views as policy achievements are rehabbing road and bridge infrastructure, increasing salaries for public school teachers and cutting the state’s income tax. 

The end of Gunn’s speech sounded like a prelude to a future campaign announcement. He told attendees at the Capitol ceremony that he wanted to be part of an effort that helps build up the next generation of Mississippians and continue to make the state the “best place to live and work.” 

“I am not riding off into the sunset, but I will be riding into the sunrise,” Gunn said. 

Regardless of whether Gunn chooses to run for statewide office, his portrait will hang in the Capitol alongside other past speakers, as is the typical custom. Whenever the 122 elected House members enter the chamber during a session, they will likely view Gunn’s image. 

Current House Speaker Jason White told Mississippi Today that he believes the portrait captures his predecessor’s “down-to-earth” nature and his bold leadership style. When he views the painting, White said he’ll remember how Gunn led “from the front” and not “from the side or the back.”

“I can only hope to kind of get close to that mark,” White said. “For us, when you see that, you remember that guy and that leader, and it’s a good memory.”

Mississippi lawmakers are considering legislation that would make joint custody the standard in all divorce cases – something done in only five states.

Advocates of the proposed legislation say it will even the playing field for fathers. But litigation to gain sole custody would become more costly and time-consuming. If enacted into law, opponents say this bill would disproportionately hurt low-income women and those who work full time caring for children and households. 

Critics also say women who get joint custody of their children may end up providing most of the childcare, but they won’t receive child support that can make that extra care more manageable. In some cases, it could force women into contact with abusive ex-husbands or leave children in the custody of abusive fathers.

In most states, including Mississippi, parental custody is considered on a case-by-case basis. Often, mothers are granted primary custody. Experts say this legislation, if passed, would affect tens of thousands of Mississippi parents each year. 

Rep. Shane Aguirre, a Republican from Tupelo and author of the bill, told Mississippi Today he thinks Mississippi fathers have the odds stacked against them. He proposed legislation to make the system more fair, and because he believes children benefit from having a mother and father present when possible. 

“Why not start where we’re going to be 50-50 at the beginning?” Aguirre said. “And then if we have an issue with the dad who’s got problems, or mom she’s got problems, we can adjust it. 

Splitting custody down the middle is not necessarily the best scenario for all families, said Douglas NeJaime, a family law professor at Yale Law School. He also said creating a preference for joint custody could obscure the nuances of individual cases. 

“Families come in all shapes and sizes,” NeJaime said. “It’s not clear that a presumption of shared custody is going to promote the interests of children.”

Five Mississippi family and divorce lawyers told Mississippi Today they felt the legislation was unnecessary. Four of them said it was harmful. 

“I think it’ll be used to put more women in court than should be,” said Mark Chinn, who has practiced Mississippi law for 47 years and family law for 35 years. Chinn added that he respects that fathers today want to be more involved, but believes that this legislation would only make things harder for women. 

To those who aren’t lawyers, the system might appear to blindly favor mothers, but it doesn’t, said Matthew Thompson, who practices family law in Madison and is an adjunct professor  at Mississippi College School of Law. 

Current state law presumes mothers and fathers are equally entitled to custody of their children. Judges award custody based on a rubric of 12 factors, including employment responsibilities and who provided most of the care before the divorce. 

“Dads think, ‘Well I could have done XYZ, but I had to work.’ Well, they’re right, they probably could have – but they didn’t,” said Thompson. “The facts are what’s driving those cases. It’s not an inherent bias.”

That was the case for Terry Winter, a real estate agent in Tupelo, who always wanted to be a mother. After getting married and having children, Winter said she paid for her children’s braces and was their primary caregiver, taking them to doctors’ appointments and sports games. Her marriage unraveled. In 2015, Winter divorced her husband, and was then awarded full custody of their three teenage sons.  

If Winter had to pay to prove those things in court, she said she worries her family “would have been living on the street.”

Under the proposed legislation, sole custody would still be awarded to the mother in many cases, said John Grant, a former Rankin County judge who presided over 6,000 divorce cases during his 24 years in the role. But the presumption of joint custody would have to be overcome, and that will waste resources, Grant said. 

“It offers false hope in most cases to fathers,” Grant said. “It’s going to promulgate needless litigation.”

In some states where versions of this law already exist, some women who should get custody of children after a divorce don’t. Under Kentucky’s joint custody presumption law, the Wall Street Journal reported about cases where women and children have suffered abuse because the law compelled them to interact with violent ex-spouses and caregivers. 

Joy Jones, director of the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said she’s not against the bill. However, she would like to see it amended to make exceptions for domestic violence. If the onus is on the victim to provide “a preponderance of evidence” showing abuse, Jones said she worries that will put women and children in harm’s way. In some cases, Jones said, a victim of such violence might choose to stay in an abusive relationship because it seems better than having their children out of sight. 

“The victim might go back to ensure that they can watch and see what’s happening with their children,” Jones said. 

Jak Smith served as Winter’s attorney, and he said lawyers stand to benefit from increased litigation if the bill passes. But he worries about the people it would hurt. 

“I will make more money if this law passes, but it’s wrong,” Smith said. 

For the bill to survive, the House will have to bring it up for a vote by Thursday. If it passes the House, it will be sent to Gov. Tate Reeves. The House also has the option to invite further debate with the Senate.

Democrats say a top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency with a record of claiming that he has been teleported isn’t qualified for the job.

FEMA Associate Administrator Gregg Phillips, an ally of President Donald Trump with a history of being an election denier, was appointed to lead the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery in December. His remarks that he has teleported, including to a Waffle House, his past rhetoric about immigrants and his penchant for remarks promoting violence also drew concern from lawmakers.

Phillips was set to testify in front of the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday at a hearing discussing the effects of the ongoing DHS shutdown. But he was unexpectedly replaced in the lineup by the agency’s external affairs associate, Victoria Barton.

“FEMA is on its third unqualified acting administrator in 15 months. And the witness that was scheduled to testify today, Mr. Gregg Phillips, raises serious concerns. He said of President Biden last year, and I quote, ‘I’d like to punch that (expletive) in the mouth right now. He deserves to die,’” Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking member of the committee, said at the hearing.

“That kind of violent rhetoric and wild conspiracy theories are troubling for someone who holds a leadership position at DHS,” he added.

Thompson said during the hearing that Phillips was absent due to an “emergency.” FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to NOTUS’ request for comment on his absence.

Phillips was director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services in the 1990s, under Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice.

Democratic Rep. Tim Kennedy described Phillips as “wildly unfit for his role as head of response and recovery” and said that he looks “forward to seeing him here before this committee in person.”

“Ms. Barton, I wanted to ask Mr. Phillips, along with my colleagues, about his election conspiracy theories, about his violent statements about former President Biden, or his deeply troubling bigoted comments about immigrants,” Kennedy said. “All of which, to me, makes him wholly disqualified to hold his position on its own. But only to be outdone by his claims of being teleported to a Waffle House.”

FEMA has been in the spotlight during the agency shutdown. Earlier this month, lawmakers on the House and Senate Judiciary committees grilled then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on what they called her mismanagement of FEMA. The pressure culminated with President Donald Trump firing Noem and replacing her with newly confirmed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who has promised his leadership style will be a departure from Noem’s.

The shutdown has now surpassed 30 days, but Senate Republicans still face an uncertain road to reaching an agreement with Democrats to end it.

During the hearing, Barton told lawmakers that FEMA’s dwindling Disaster Relief Fund is now at $3.6 billion. She added that the agency’s ability to provide some services, such as recovery efforts after storms, is limited because of the shutdown.

“With hurricane season approaching, each day of this shutdown increases the risk that a catastrophic disaster could occur while FEMA’s capacity to respond and support recovery is diminished,” Barton said. “This shutdown is imposing far-reaching and serious consequences for FEMA’s operations and the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to and recover from disasters.”

Three Mississippi businesses are suing the company that operates the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control warehouse. 

Delays and software issues at the warehouse earlier this year left many bars, restaurants and package store owners with empty shelves and lost revenue. The warehouse in Gluckstadt is still working through a backlog of orders. 

Aloha Wine and Spirits, Rosetti’s Liquor Barrel and Buckshots, all Gulf Coast businesses, filed separate lawsuits against Ruan Transport Corporation. The Iowa-based company has been the contracted operator of the state-owned ABC Warehouse since March 2023. 

The lawsuits allege that Ruan has breached its contract with the Department of Revenue through mismanagement of a software transition, not delivering to stores within the timeline the company had laid out in its initial proposal and by billing stores for orders that were not delivered or only partially delivered. This breach of contract, the suit claims, has resulted in loss of revenue for the businesses. 

In Mississippi, the warehouse serves as the only distributor in the state for almost all alcohol, with the exception of beer and some light wines. The warehouse is owned by the state and ABC is under the Department of Revenue.

The warehouse was previously operated by the state but in 2022 the Legislature passed a law authorizing the department to hire a third party to operate it.

The department has said that overall operations have been running more efficiently with Ruan. In addition, a new $55-million warehouse is under construction that will have double the capacity of the current one. 

In January, the warehouse shut down to do inventory and implement new management software. The new software is not compatible with the warehouse’s conveyor belt system so the conveyor was torn out and a new system of lifting individual pallets to load trucks was implemented.

Issues with software implementation and adjusting to the new system resulted in a backlog of over 200,000 cases in February, ABC officials said.

Business owners, restaurateurs and angry customers have inundated the Legislature with complaints. Many had similar complaints as those brought up in the lawsuit, including deliveries for which they were charged but did not receive. 

The department has said that it expects to work through the full backlog by May. 

In a February hearing, legislators promised swift action. SB 2838 is in negotiation between the Senate and House and would allow ABC permit holders to purchase alcohol from any licensed distributor nationwide. This amendment, called “The Emergency Alcohol Distribution Act,” was brought by Rep. Hank Zuber, a Republican from Ocean Springs. 

While businesses report that deliveries are more regular, there is still a backlog. However, the Department of Revenue has said that all the issues have been resolved and that the warehouse is working hard to improve the process.

The Mississippi House’s proposed changes to the state retirement system would cost $1.25 billion over the next three decades and $175 million immediately to keep the program stable, according to state actuaries. 

With a handful of pricey policies still being negotiated in the final weeks of the session, Senate leaders — who have pitched a plan to spend $1 billion on the retirement system over 10 years — say the House’s plan costs too much for too little payoff. 

“I can’t see where you can spend more money than what we’re spending,” said Sen. Daniel Sparks, a Republican from Belmont who’s behind the Senate’s retirement proposals. “I don’t see where the money’s coming from.”

The retirement system has unfunded liabilities of $26 billion. The Legislature made sweeping changes to the program last year in an effort to shore up the system, including creating a new plan with fewer benefits for people hired after March of this year. 

Critics say that the new retirement plan will discourage people from taking state jobs. They say many employees stay in what can be relatively low-paying jobs for robust retirement benefits at the end of their years of service. 

As a result, both chambers have pitched plans this year that would “correct” last year’s changes to the Mississippi Public Employees’ Retirement System, which covers about 350,000 public employees or retirees and represents about 10% of the state’s population.

“We can afford anything we want to afford,” said House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville. “You do what you have to do to retain good people. If you don’t have a good pay or retirement structure, you’re not going to keep good people.”

The House’s plan, included in a nearly 500-page teacher pay raise bill, would tweak retirement benefits and eligibility for first responders and people hired to state jobs after March 1 of this year — a new category called “Tier 5” — and makes changes to the state’s return-to-work policies. 

A memo from the state Legislative Budget Office shows that analysts requested a breakdown of the fiscal impact of the House retirement plan earlier this month. 

The House plan would bring retirement eligibility for first responders who entered the system prior to March 1 back down from 35 years to 25 years of service or age 60 with 8 years of service. All first responders in Tier 5, hired after March 1, would be able to retire after the same years of service and age with their four highest consecutive years or earned compensation.

Other state employees would also be able to retire with their four highest consecutive years of compensation at 30 years of service or age 60 with 8 years of service.

Additionally, retirees would be able to return to work after a 90-day break in service at any district. Roberson said they would still have to contribute to the retirement system, but would not get a benefit for that contribution.

In contrast, the Senate’s proposals would infuse the state retirement system with $1 billion over 10 years, starting with $500 million this July, and add an additional $50 million a year over 10 years for cost-of-living increases.

The Senate plan would also bring down the years of service required to retire with full benefits from 35 to 30 for all state employees hired after March 1 and allow most people to return to a state job at up to 80% of their position’s salary and get insurance benefits. 

“Our billion actually lowers the liabilities,” Sparks said. “Their money keeps the liabilities at the same level … The money we’re putting in stabilizes the entire system.”

The chambers have invited negotiations on each other’s plans as of Tuesday.

“I get what Senator Sparks is saying,” Roberson said. “I don’t disagree with his assessment … but for the state of Mississippi to grow, we have to understand that we have to pay people the amount that nationally we’re competing with, and part of that pay structure is retirement.” 

Gov. Tate Reeves has approved a bill to retain funding that came to Mississippi from a historic federal infrastructure funding package in 2021.

As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the federal government allocated $1.8 billion to the state in 2022. Of that pot, the state awarded $423 million in matching water and sewerage grants for cities and counties, as well as $385 million for rural water associations.

But the deadline to spend that money is sneaking up. The federal program requires that all money be spent by Dec. 31 of this year. In early February, lawmakers released a list of projects under those programs, showing millions in unspent money around the state.

As of the end of 2025, only 56% of the grants for cities and counties, handled by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, had been spent while, as of Feb. 2, 69% of grants awarded to rural water associations, handled by the Mississippi State Department of Health, had been spent. In total, over $305 million from those two programs was still unspent, although that number has likely gone down since February.

House Bill 1571, which Reeves signed into law Monday, moved the Dec. 31 deadline up to make sure the state doesn’t lose any of the federal money. As soon as Sept. 30, and no later than Oct. 15, the state will redirect unspent ARPA funds to three different places: The first $100 million will go to Mississippi Department of Transportation projects. Up to $63 million would then go towards a state health and life insurance fund.

After that, any remaining money would be spent at the governor’s discretion, following federal guidelines. The state Department of Finance and Administration will have until Oct. 30 to report to the House and Senate on how much money was split between the three buckets, and how much funding, if any, remains.

“It gives us the highest probability of the least amount of money going back to (Washington) D.C.,” said Sen. Bart Williams, a Republican from Starkville and an author of the Senate’s version of the bill. “If we hadn’t done this, I would suspect there would be several millions of dollars that would have to go back to D.C.”

He explained that some projects have come in under budget, or the local entity realized they couldn’t complete the project under the time constraints. For places with legitimate reasons for not spending all their money, such as a contracting issue, there’s a chance the Legislature could still appropriate funding back to those places, Williams told Mississippi Today in February.

Mississippi Today reached out to several cities and counties with unspent ARPA funds. Almost all said their projects were still ongoing and weren’t worried they would lose any needed grant money.

The February list showed Harrison County, for instance, with millions in unspent funds and most of its projects at less than 50% complete. But Jaclyn Turner, the county’s head engineer, explained there’s a lag between completing a project and paying for it, which makes it look like projects are much farther behind than they are.

Before she can request a reimbursement from the state, Turner said she first has to verify the work has been done and pay the contractor on the front end.

“ That kind of sets a stage where it looks like money is not being spent as quickly as it truly is,” Turner said.

She added there’s a long initial process, too, between following procurement laws and obtaining permits. Turner said the county sidelined some projects that would have “too many hoops to jump through,” but that all of its roughly 20 open ARPA projects should be complete by the new deadline.

Other entities with large unspent amounts, including the cities of Gulfport and Jackson, also said they expected to have their projects completed by the deadline.

Mississippi Rural Water Association CEO Kirby Mayfield said he expected a few systems to have trouble spending the needed funds by the new deadline.

“There’s not going to be a bunch, but there’s going to be some that don’t make this deadline,” Mayfield said last week.

The nonprofit CEO, who supported the bill, pointed to the limited number of people who can drill water wells in the state as an obstacle in ARPA spending.

“There are so many wells in these ARPA projects,” Mayfield said. “Mississippi doesn’t have but three or four well drillers that can drill these big wells. The well drillers just aren’t going to have enough time (before the ARPA deadline).”

Local entities have until the end of August to send reimbursement requests to the state for their ARPA projects.

NETTLETON — For the last 12 years, Thomas Minor has never missed a single election — local, state or federal.

It’s his way of making sure he has a say in the place he’s called home his whole life: Itawamba County. Over the years, he’s cast his ballot for candidates across the political spectrum.

But in Mississippi’s latest election — the March 10 congressional primaries — he didn’t end up voting at all. 

When Minor showed up to the polls, he found his name missing from the poll book. His voting status had changed to inactive. A couple days later, he learned it was all because of an error that was never supposed to happen.

The mistake originated from unverified consumer data the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office handed to county election officials statewide in July as an additional new tool to do the routine job of checking voters’ addresses and determining their status. Records show Minor’s voter registration was up to date, listing the address of a one-story home on the edge of the county, where he’s lived for the last eight years.

But according to the credit data from the consumer-reporting giant Experian — which guesses consumers’ possible addresses — Minor had an address about 160 miles away in Tchula, in a squat house with a shattered door, overgrown front lawn and “no trespassing” sign out front, based on Google Earth imagery from 2023.

Minor said he had never even heard of Tchula, much less been there. But to Itawamba’s election officials, the credit data showed Minor wasn’t living where he was registered to vote. They made him inactive last August, without his knowledge.

Minor is one of numerous Mississippi voters who were wrongly made inactive from errors in the credit data that went unchecked and unverified at every stage of the annual process of cleaning the voter rolls. The errors came as the secretary of state’s office broke from the official government data that Mississippi and most other states have relied on for years to track when voters move. 

It’s unknown exactly how many voters were wrongly made inactive due to the credit data, but Mississippi Today identified numerous voters who were affected from across the political spectrum and confirmed the mistakes with their county election officials. Their experiences resulted from a lack of proper safeguards to check the accuracy of the data before they could inactivate legitimate voters, even as the secretary of state’s office touted that the information would “bring a new level of reliable data to voter-roll maintenance.”

Mississippi Today found that Secretary of State Michael Watson’s rollout of the unverified credit data resulted in:

• Barriers to the ballot box: Because these voters never received notice they were made inactive, they didn’t discover the mistakes unless they checked their voter status days to weeks before Election Day or until they showed up at the polls. Affected voters and party election administrators say the issue made this month’s primaries, the first federal election since rollout of the credit data statewide, an early case study in how the new system put up barriers to the ballot box.
• Years of mistakes: State law broadly allows the secretary of state to roll out any “reliable information” to verify voters’ addresses. Election officials in Lafayette County, who began experimenting with the tool when the law took effect two years ago, say they warned the secretary of state’s office then that the credit data had incorrect addresses, and Mississippi Today found cases of voters wrongly labeled inactive as far back as 2024. Despite this, the secretary of state’s office a year later moved to expand the credit data statewide as “reliable information.”
• No notice: Under state law, election officials are required to mail a single notice to voters informing them they’re inactive and need to verify their home address with election officials. Counties have been sending those notices to the unverified addresses provided from Experian, where the voter might not even live. 

The secretary of state’s office has declined Mississippi Today’s repeated requests for an interview with Watson, saying that the news organization’s past reporting on concerns and gaps in the office’s rollout of the credit data caused “unnecessary confusion.” The office did not respond to a request for comment on how it checked the reliability of the credit data or fulfilled its legal responsibility to train election officials.

“Our office is not in the habit of using journalists as a pass-through for disseminating information, particularly when misconstrued,” Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jonson wrote in an email.

But in an interview with Mississippi Public Broadcasting the day after the primaries, Watson told host Russ Latino that from the beginning, the rollout of the credit data was “wildly successful.”

“It was a really successful partnership, as far as I’m concerned,” said Watson, a Republican who’s looking to move from his role as the state’s chief election officer to a new elected office next year, potentially lieutenant governor.

Minor sees it differently. To him, the secretary of state’s rollout of unverified data ultimately kept him from voting for the first time in 12 years, even though he had done everything on his part to ensure his registration made him eligible as an active voter.

“At that point, you lose voters,” Minor said. “The harder you make it to vote, the less people are going to vote.”

No ballot

Inactive voters aren’t barred from casting a ballot, but their status does limit how they can vote. They only can vote through signed paper ballots in their home precinct. Even after a paper ballot is cast, it must come under review to determine whether it’ll count.

Watson told MPB that the process means Mississippians can still cast a ballot if a mistake compromises their status. But those voters and voting-rights advocates say that in practice, those mistakes create more barriers for people who never should have been affected in the first place, which can hinder their access to the ballot box, limit the power of their vote or keep them from voting entirely.

In Minor’s case, that was all true. After his name didn’t show up in the poll book, poll workers told Minor he’d have to vote with an affidavit ballot for the first time. The process was completely new to Minor, but he did what he was told.

He filled out the papers the poll workers provided, signed to affirm his identity and quickly turned them in so he could get to his long shift producing Toyota car parts. The poll workers offered little explanation of the process. Minor believed he’d receive the actual ballot in the mail, where he’d fill out his vote.

“I didn’t ask any questions because I was in a hurry,” Minor said. “But I filled everything they handed me out and then handed it in. They filled out what they needed and said, ‘That was it.’”

It wasn’t until Minor was well down the road that he realized the poll workers never provided him with a ballot to mark his vote and none was coming in the mail. 

For the first time in 12 years, he didn’t vote.

‘We’ve corrected a lot of them’

Heather Williams said she would’ve also discovered she was made inactive at the polls if she hadn’t happened to get an email from a Democratic voters league warning her to check her voter-registration status, in case she was made inactive without her knowledge.

Two weeks before she planned to vote in the primaries, Williams went online to check her status. She wasn’t too concerned because she had always worked to make sure her voter registration was updated, especially after she moved to her current home in Starkville seven years ago. 

But her name didn’t show up in the system. She was inactive.

When she contacted her county’s circuit clerk’s office, which is responsible for registering voters, Oktibbeha County Elections Deputy Clerk Regina Sykes told her it didn’t seem like Williams lived where she was registered to vote.

Instead, Experian’s data incorrectly linked her to an old address in Columbus, where she hadn’t lived in years. Sykes said election officials, acting on the false information from the secretary of state, changed Williams’ voting status to inactive.

The fix was quick, and the circuit clerk’s office reactivated Williams’ voter status that same day so she could vote without a hitch in the primaries. But Williams knew she was able to resolve the issue only because she happened to check her status. She worried for other voters who weren’t as as informed about the voting process.

“There shouldn’t have been any questions about my address,” Williams said. “You’re just creating more stress and potentially, down the line, more obstacles for people.”

Sykes said Williams wasn’t the only voter mistakenly made inactive by errors in the credit data in Oktibbeha County, which has some of the highest rates of inactive voters in the state, according to voter records from the secretary of state’s office. According to Sykes, her office has corrected the statuses of “a lot” of voters who were mistakenly made inactive, especially people who discovered the errors after they turned out to the polls in the primaries.

Williams identifies as a Democrat. But to her, the scope of the errors is a concern that goes beyond party.

“I don’t think this is a Democrat or a Republican problem. This is just an overall issue for everybody,” Williams said. “Even my 68-year-old Republican mother has said this is all ridiculous and cause for concern.”

Watson told MPB that the data was meant to serve as another “tool” for counties to identify voters who had moved from where they were registered.

“The key for us is, ‘How do we give as many tools as possible to our elections commissioners to do their jobs?’” Watson told MPB this month. “I cannot force them to do it.”

But Williams said her experience showed the secretary of state’s office didn’t do its job to vet the reliability of the credit data and verify information that could negatively impact voters like her.

“It’s his way of taking the accountability off of him,” Williams said of Watson’s remarks. “It sounds to me like you’re giving people rusty tools when you’re using Experian.”

Unverified and unchecked

Experian has never billed its “most powerful locating product,” a massive consumer database called TrueTrace, as a verified source. Instead, the tool makes educated guesses on the possible addresses of over 245 million consumers based on a slate of exclusive data collected over years of their spending history: loans, rent payments, credit files and more.

Experian wrote that for most consumers in the database, its tool links a handful of possible addresses based on this trove of information. From this, it zeroes in on a single “Best Address,” which the company states is the place “where the consumer is most likely to be reached.” 

But still, according to the company, it’s a guess.

“Often, this will match their residence; however, we don’t verify residency,” Experian wrote to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that initially offered the data for Watson’s office to use in Mississippi.

But when the secretary of state’s office unveiled its statewide “partnership” with Experian last year, it announced that election commissioners in all 82 counties would get access to “reliable commercial data” from the company’s “long history as a credit reporting agency.” In a series of press releases announcing the partnership, the office made no mention that the addresses in the credit data were unverified or provided transparency on the checks it implemented to determine the data was reliable.

“While Experian’s data and insights can assist with voter list maintenance efforts, all decisions related to voter registration policies, procedures and record updates are made solely by election officials in accordance with local, state and federal laws,” the company wrote in an emailed statement.

The secretary of state’s office did not fulfill a public-records request on how many voters the credit data was used for in time for publication. A Mississippi Today analysis of voter records from Watson’s office found that since the credit data was rolled out statewide, election officials have made at least 50,000 voters inactive due to address conflicts, for which Experian’s information is a key source.

If they don’t vote in the next two federal general elections, they could be purged from the list altogether under state law.

The primaries: An early look into the data’s flaws

The consequences of the secretary of state’s rollout of unverified credit data came out as voter turnout surged in the Senate primaries, with Democrat Scott Colom drawing out voters in his quest to unseat Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in the November general election.

The jump in Democratic participation meant that Mikel Bolden, executive director of the Mississippi Democratic Party, had a lot more on her hands. Bolden directs the state party, whose county committees help conduct the Democratic primaries in their jurisdictions.

But on Election Day, she said she and her team were disrupted by an increase in reports from voters who discovered they were made inactive at the polls, even though they had just been able to vote as usual in recent elections.

Bolden said the party was used to hearing a “couple” of these reports every Election Day. But this time, she said a “substantial” amount of voters were affected.

Some told the party’s election-protection hotline that they were worried errors in the credit data had wrongly affected their status, Bolden said. Frustrated voters vented to her as workers couldn’t find their names in the poll books, leaving them to wait in line for a paper ballot and put their faith in an unfamiliar process.

Bolden tried to encourage the voters to stick it out. But for some, the frustration was too much. She said they decided to leave the polls without casting a vote.

“Regardless of if you don’t agree with how the person is voting, everybody still deserves the right to vote, still deserves the right to exercise their voice,” Bolden said. “But if you keep having the same issue of being inactive, you’re gonna have lesser voter turnout.”

The voters weren’t able to find out from poll workers on Election Day if they had been made inactive because credit data incorrectly identified their address. Only their county’s election officials would know. 

But Bolden said the secretary of state’s lack of transparency on gaps in the process compounded voters’ concerns and burdened the party as they worked to administer this year’s Democratic primaries. She said the secretary of state’s office never notified the party ahead of the primaries that they might encounter voters who were wrongly made inactive due to errors in the unverified credit data it provided election officials.

“It was a lot of frustration that happened on Election Day. This was totally left field,” Bolden said. “None of this was passed down to us by anyone.”

She said that if the secretary of state had notified the party, it would have been able to prepare its team to assist these voters. As Mississippi looks to the general election in November, Bolden is concerned that these issues could play out on a wider scale if errors in the credit data continue to go unchecked.

The Mississippi Republican Party, whose county committees conduct the Republican primaries, did not respond to an interview request. While Mississippi Today identified that Mississippians who had historically voted for Republican candidates were wrongly made inactive due to errors in the credit data, it is unclear whether party staff saw an impact in the Republican primaries.

Mistake inactivations date to 2024

Before handing the credit data to every county statewide, the secretary of state’s office handpicked Lafayette County to test out the new tool.

In Lafayette County, the University of Mississippi’s record-high enrollment creates special challenges for the commission’s responsibility to maintain accurate voter rolls, as students bounce around residences often or even return to their family’s homes outside of the county during long breaks or after graduation. 

District 4 Election Commissioner Laura Antonow said Lafayette’s commission wanted to be helpful and agreed to be the first to pilot the new tool starting in 2024, alongside Circuit Clerk Jeff Busby’s office. 

She said voter-roll maintenance should be a “partnership” between voters and election officials, but it’s long been bogged down as many voters fail to update their registration when they move. 

The sources that commissioners have traditionally depended on to identify these voters can give an incomplete, outdated view, according to Antonow. The main source that Mississippi and most states have relied on to track voters’ moves, U.S. Postal Service data on address changes, is an official governmental source. But it can flag moves only when people submit a paid notice to the Postal Service that they’ve relocated — something many voters never do.

Watson told MPB that from the beginning, the “big purpose” in rolling out the credit data was to “replace” the “outdated” Postal Service information.

“It’s not even good information,” Watson told MPB. “So, the commercial data that’s now starting to see, ‘Where are loans coming from? Where are house notes?’ — it’s better data to locate somebody where they actually do live.”

But still, the credit data sparked Antonow’s concern.

“It’s commercial data versus governmental data, and that made me a little skeptical,” Antonow said. “I told Jeff, ‘It was just a matter of time before people got concerned about this.’”

As the commissioners started using the credit data, Antonow said they discovered its errors in a way that hit home. Some of the commissioners found that Experian’s data flagged incorrect home addresses for their own family members, according to Antonow.

She said the commission informed the secretary of state’s office that the credit data had incorrect information years ago. The secretary of state’s office did not respond to repeated questions on whether it was aware that errors in the credit data wrongly inactivated legitimate voters.

Because the credit data didn’t prove to be entirely accurate, Antonow said the commission decided to avoid trusting its information alone and weighed other factors, such as the last time a person voted, before determining their status. The more recently someone voted in the precinct where they were registered, the more likely it was that they still lived there, no matter what the credit data indicated.

“We were very careful about who to make inactive,” Antonow said.

But errors still occurred. Jordan Jones Higginbotham, an Ole Miss student in Antonow’s district, discovered she was made inactive a week before she planned to vote in the 2024 primaries as she checked her voter status online — something she’s gotten in the habit of doing every time she intends to vote.

Higginbotham’s lived and voted in Mississippi her whole life. She originally registered to vote where she’s from, in Madison County, but she updated her voter registration when she moved to Oxford for college.

But that’s not what the credit data indicated to Antonow. According to Experian, Higginbotham actually lived in Madison County.

“So many people in our state already believe their vote doesn’t count,” Higginbotham said. “They don’t vote. So when they see that things like this are happening, it’s just another thing to put on their list why they shouldn’t vote to begin with.”

No notice

When Mississippi officials make a voter inactive, state law requires that officials send a single piece of mail to the voter, called a “confirmation notice,” to inform them they’ve been made inactive and need to verify their home address with the county. Higginbotham never received any word that she’d been marked inactive — just like all the voters Mississippi Today identified.

In the handful of other jurisdictions that have also turned to credit data, such as Montana, Maryland and West Virginia, officials do something different. They send out a notice asking voters to verify their address before making any changes to their status, which serves as a check on the unverified credit data. If the voter doesn’t respond within a certain period, then officials mark them inactive in those jurisdictions.

Under state law, Mississippi officials don’t wait at all.

Lafayette’s election officials thought they had mailed Higginbotham a notice. But she never got it because officials sent it to the incorrect address that the credit data linked to her in Madison County. 

The same thing happened to Minor. Two months after his county’s circuit clerk mailed out the notice to the house in Tchula, it returned as undeliverable — because he never even lived there. Under this system, legitimate voters are mistakenly made inactive without their knowledge and the notice they’re entitled to under state law.

“That does seem like a problem,” Busby said, after Mississippi Today flagged the issue to him.

Antonow and Busby told Mississippi Today that going forward, Lafayette County’s election officials would consider sending those notices to at least one verified address, the home address in a person’s voter registration. That way, they would be notified that they were made inactive, even if the credit data linked an incorrect address.

It speaks to the imperfections in this system, as errors persist and election commissioners correct them, largely without central guidance from the secretary of state. Antonow said errors and mistakes from Lafayette County’s first round using the credit data taught her lessons for when she used it this year.

“We’ve been much more conservative of who we’ve made inactive, just because we know there are some inaccuracies,” Antonow said. “Voters who are concerned should definitely question Experian and the secretary of state.”

You can check your voter-registration status at the secretary of state’s Y’All Vote website.

 This is a Mississippi baseball fan’s delight, highlighted by a three-game SEC series matching State and Ole Miss at Oxford and Opening Day in the Major Leagues. So much to discuss.

Stream all episodes here.

Editor’s note: This piece first published on the blog for Heartland Forward, a nonprofit, policy think-and-do tank that turns ideas into action for states and local communities.

Across the Heartland, a critical community-building tool is quietly slipping away. Since 2005, the United States has lost more than one-third of its newspapers, according to “The State of Local News 2025,” a product of the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

“Over the past two decades, the number of news desert counties – areas that lack consistent local reporting – has grown steadily,” the 2025 report states. “This past year was no exception: in this report, we are tracking 212 U.S. counties without any local news source, up from 206 last year. In another 1,525 counties, there is only one news source remaining, typically a weekly newspaper. Taken together, in these counties some 50 million Americans live with limited or no access to local news.”

Nearly 60% of the counties with one or fewer news sources – 1,055 in total – are in the heartland, a region comprising 20 states in the middle of the country that together would be the third-largest economy in the world. That means more than half of heartland counties are news deserts or at risk of becoming one.

But here’s what the statistics don’t show: Every newspaper closure means more than lost information. It means communities lose valuable tools to tackle their biggest challenges, whether in workforce development, affordable housing or healthcare access. Without reliable sources of information, people lack the shared facts they need to work together and secure the support their communities require.

For those of us in the nonprofit journalism space, and especially at Deep South Today where we serve under-resourced communities in the heartland, the question isn’t simply how to keep local news alive. It’s how to sustain and enhance high-quality reporting that can help communities more effectively address the challenges they face.

From information gaps to real solutions

Consider what happened in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 2022 water crisis when the city’s aging water system failed. Approximately 150,000 residents were without safe drinking water. Our newsroom Mississippi Today didn’t just report on the crisis. Journalism became an essential infrastructure. The newsroom provided daily updates on water distribution sites, boil-water notices and steps residents could take to protect their health. By delivering practical information people could use, Mississippi Today built trust and showed how journalism can partner with communities to solve urgent problems.

The heartland needs a model of journalism that goes beyond documenting problems to helping communities find solutions. By reporting in depth on complex issues such as maternal health, workforce shortages and infrastructure gaps, nonprofit news provides the information that policymakers, business leaders and residents need to make informed decisions.

Another example of that is our recent partnership with the Fuller Project to examine Mississippi’s high rate of cesarean births. The reporting didn’t just point out problems. It also highlighted hospitals that were successfully turning things around. By showing both challenges and what’s working, the coverage gave healthcare leaders concrete examples to learn from. This is information that leads to action.

Building a stronger news ecosystem

We are encouraged to see more nonprofit newsrooms embracing collaboration instead of competition as the way forward. These organizations produce in-depth reporting on important issues and make that content free for other news outlets (both nonprofit and commercial) to publish, ensuring it reaches as many people as possible.

This approach addresses a real problem: As traditional news organizations have cut back on reporting, gaps have opened up in coverage of complex policy issues, government accountability and solutions-focused stories. Nonprofit newsrooms step in to fill these gaps, providing essential information that individual outlets, particularly smaller ones, can no longer afford to generate on their own.

The result is a system where different types of news organizations play different roles. Commercial outlets continue to provide daily coverage while nonprofit newsrooms contribute investigative projects and deep reporting that help the entire region. When this content gets republished across multiple platforms, from small-town newspapers to statewide networks, it reaches people who might otherwise lack access to quality journalism.

Bright spots: innovation despite the crisis

While news deserts continue to grow, there’s a promising trend. More than 300 local news startups have launched across the U.S. in the past five years. Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative tracks these developments and identifies “Bright Spots,” news organizations that build innovative and sustainable approaches to serving their communities. 

These Bright Spots share common traits: funding that combines foundation support with reader contributions, deep community relationships, editorial independence and a commitment to working together. 

Yet a big challenge remains: 90% of new startups are in cities. Rural and less wealthy communities, the very places where news deserts are most endemic, continue to fall further behind. This growing divide between news haves and have-nots threatens to deepen existing inequalities across the region.

Deep South Today was one of 12 Bright Spots featured in 2025. Covering Louisiana and Mississippi with plans to expand across the region, our newsrooms produce solutions-focused reporting on issues critical to the communities we serve. From economic development, education, healthcare and civic engagement, the content reaches millions through partnerships with commercial news outlets across the South, creating impact far beyond what any single organization could achieve alone.

Journalism as community infrastructure

Communities with strong local news see clear benefits. Things like higher voter turnout, more competitive elections, better-informed policy debates and greater accountability for public officials. On the flip side, research shows that news deserts experience more corruption, less civic engagement and more polarized voting.

Forward-thinking leaders across the country have come to view journalism support not as charity but as a smart investment in their community’s ability to solve problems. Whether through corporate partnerships, foundation grants or individual donations, they’re helping build sustainable models for quality journalism that serve everyone.

The path forward

The wave of new local news startups, backed by growing foundation support, is encouraging. This trend shows both the demand for quality journalism and the emergence of new ways to sustain it. 

Yet the gap between news haves and have-nots continues to grow. Closing it requires purposeful investment in news infrastructure across the heartland. It means supporting newsrooms rooted in their communities. It means treating quality journalism not as a luxury but as essential infrastructure for making good decisions, building effective policy, and growing the economy.

The heartland’s challenges are real and urgent, spanning economic transition, workforce development and health care access. But its potential is even greater. Together, the 20 states of the heartland have an economic output of almost $7.5 trillion and should not be overlooked.

Communities achieve progress through pragmatic collaboration among business, government, charitable groups and their citizens. Informed communities, fueled by quality journalism, not only make this work possible but also speed it up. Heartland communities are too essential to our nation’s well-being to be without trusted local information sources.   

___

Warwick Sabin is the founding President and CEO of Deep South Today, a nonprofit newsroom network serving Louisiana and Mississippi.

If state lawmakers don’t act soon, Mississippi will pay at least an additional $120 million a year to run its food assistance program. That’s because of a 2017 state law that generated more paperwork for social safety net programs. 

Under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump over the summer, the cost of food assistance benefits will shift from the federal government to states. How much a state will pay is based on its error rate for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

An error rate measures how accurately each state determines whether a person is eligible for SNAP benefits. States with error rates over 10%, such as Mississippi, will have to pay a penalty tied to the amount of benefits they receive. 

Mississippi’s 2024 error rate of 10.69% is slightly below the national average but would still leave Mississippi on the hook for the maximum penalty. 

Experts say that red tape surrounding Mississippi’s anti-hunger program has contributed significantly to its high error rate. The state’s unique and labyrinthine reporting system leads beneficiaries and the Mississippi Department of Human Services to make errors in processing applications and redeterminations. 

“If we don’t get ahead of this, it is going to be a tremendous hit to the state budget,” Republican Sen. Daniel Sparks of Belmont told Mississippi Today.

Sparks has proposed legislation that would simplify SNAP paperwork, which experts say would bring the state’s error rate down.

Last year, people in Mississippi, perennially one of the poorest states in the nation, received $840 million in federal SNAP benefits.

In 2017, lawmakers passed the HOPE Act, a measure that was widely touted as fraud prevention. That move made Mississippi the only state in the nation to ban what’s called “simplified reporting” requirements for SNAP recipients. This system only required recipients to report a major change in their income immediately.

In its place, Mississippi uses a system called “change reporting.” This system requires welfare recipients to report any change in their income, household size or address within 10 days. Experts say Mississippi’s choice has hurt poor people and wasted resources. 

That applies even when the changes are minimal and make no difference in enrollees’ eligibility, explained Gina Plata-Nino, director of SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center, a national nonprofit working to end poverty-related hunger.

If someone moves, or starts a new job – even if they’re earning the same amount – they must report those changes immediately. Under simplified reporting, enrollees would report these changes at a six-month redetermination. The increased paperwork can kick off eligible people, and it strains the system and creates more room for error. 

“When you only have 10 days to get this done, to not lose benefits, it does create more of a barrier for individuals and for the state agency,” said Plata-Nino. 

Errors include when applicants submit the wrong paperwork or forget to write down their landlord’s phone number, Plata-Nino said. They also include when DHS pays recipients too little. They rarely include recipients submitting fraudulent data to receive larger benefits. 

“Payment error rates just reflect administrative and technical issues,” Plata-Nino said. “It’s not intentional wrongdoing.”

The SNAP program has one of the most rigorous systems to determine eligibility and payment accuracy among safety net programs, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Fraud has rarely been proven.

The stringent requirements are “one of the many reasons why eligible families in the state struggle to gain access to basic needs programs despite high poverty rates and persistent needs,” said Theresa Lau, senior policy counsel at the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Because of impending shifts in costs, Lau said now is the perfect time for the state to remedy that. 

Mississippi’s error rate is just barely in a higher bracket, meaning even a small decrease could save the state tens of millions of dollars a year, Lau said. 

“We’re on the edge between costs shifting to 15% versus 10%,” Lau said. “Even an incremental change in our error rate could have a significant impact in terms of how (many) dollars Mississippi will have to make up.”

Senators placed their proposal in a House bill that extends the sunset date on the Legislature’s reauthorization of the Department of Human Services’s operations. Instead of agreeing with the Senate’s suggestion and sending the measure to the governor, House members voted last week to send the bill to negotiation with the Senate. This means the legislation will face further scrutiny from a small group of lawmakers before it can go back to the full chambers. 

Rep. Kevin Felsher, a Republican from Biloxi and vice chairman of the House Public Health Committee, asked the House to send the bill to negotiations. He told Mississippi Today he supports the intent of the Senate’s proposal. Still, he would like the House to take more time in negotiation to study the impacts.  

House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican from New Albany, told Mississippi Today he is not yet sure whether he supports going back to simplified reporting requirements and that he would need to meet with the House leadership first.  He was unsure when that meeting would occur. 

Officials at DHS declined to comment, but the agency’s director, Bob Anderson, has previously said he supports what the Senate is doing. 

Rep. Robert Johnson III, a Democrat from Natchez, asked Anderson in a 2022 hearing conducted by the Legislative Black Caucus if the director supported efforts to repeal the HOPE Act. Anderson said yes. 

But Sparks said his effort to change the reporting requirements isn’t a desire to abolish the HOPE Act or to attack income verification requirements. 

In fact, Sparks said he supports the Trump administration’s push for tougher oversight of the states in the One Big Beautiful Bill because each state needs to “get it right” when it comes to spending federal dollars.

“This is not an attack on the HOPE Act,” Sparks said. “It’s an enhancement of it.” 

MDHS leaders this year have also asked lawmakers for additional money to buy better software and implement more robust income verification for SNAP recipients, something Sparks said he and other Senate leaders support. 

Lawmakers have until March 30 to file an initial negotiated proposal on the legislation to keep it alive as the legislative session enters its final days.