In Mississippi and Alaska, Democrats want to steal two Senate seats from Republicans with mail-in voting

More than a week after the election day, Mississippi and Alaska have yet to declare the winners of their Senate contests. In both jurisdictions, the ballot review continues while waiting for the arrival of thousands of mail-in votes, which would grant victory to the Democratic candidates and boost the opposition block to 56 seats in the United States Senate.

In Mississippi, counties are still reviewing thousands of ballots cast under affidavit. Democratic candidate Scott Colom is confident that the last votes counted will allow him to turn the contest around and surpass Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Regarding this process, former Federal Election Commission commissioner Sean Cooksey revealed that Mississippi has been using commercial data from companies like Experian for maintaining its voter rolls, a practice he described as unusual, though not unprecedented.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, a large volume of early and mail-in votes remains to be counted. If no candidate reaches 50% by the end of the initial count, tabulation will immediately proceed using the ranked-choice voting system.

In this state, moreover, political tension has risen in recent days when it was revealed that Democratic operatives linked to former Representative Mary Peltola's campaign promoted the candidacy of a namesake or "ghost" candidate —Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., with no ties to the Republican Party— with the aim of creating confusion among voters of the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan on the ballot.

Regarding the timelines, Cooksey warned that the winner in Alaska may not be known until the end of next week or close to Thanksgiving, which represents an atypical delay even for a state that counts votes slowly. "It's a clear example of how this system generates many problems, unlike the direct voting system used in the rest of the states," the analyst noted.