If Scott Colom becomes the next U.S. Senator from Mississippi, he will be the first Black senator from the state since Reconstruction.
Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, joins Jen to contextualize Scott Colom’s expected win within Mississippi’s broader history of racialized violence and voter suppression. Berman outlines the ripple effect Colom’s win would have throughout the South and points to key lessons that Democrats must take away from voter behavior and mobilization.
Ari Berman is Mother Jones' national voting rights correspondent.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We are delighted to have back with us Ari Berman, who, of course, is the voting rights reporter for Mother Jones. Ari, welcome!
Ari Berman
Hey, Jen, good to see you again, thank you.
Jen Rubin
We are talking about Mississippi. Remind people of the history of voting rights, of violence in this state, that within a generation now is on the cusp of electing its first African American senator.
Ari Berman
Yeah, Mississippi was the state where Jim Crow was the most violent and the most repressive. This is the place where Emmett Till was lynched. This is the place where Medgar Evers was shot in his own home. This is the state where Cheney, Goodman, and Schwerner went down to register voters and were killed by the Ku Klux Klan, where Jim Crow was so institutionalized that the Klan and the police force were basically intertwined, and it was a state where, before the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, only 6.7% of eligible Black voters were registered to vote. So it really was the epicenter of Jim Crow, and it is remarkable that now Mississippi is on the verge of electing the first Black senator since Reconstruction.
Jen Rubin
don’t realize, because voting suppression has been so successful, the proportion of the electorate there that is African American. Talk to us a little bit about the work that has gone in from civil rights leaders, from litigation, to try to get A very substantial portion of the electorate to finally engage and go out and vote.
Ari Berman
Yeah, it looks like the black share of the electorate in Mississippi increased by 3 points relative to 2024, which is enough to make the difference in Mississippi. It’s in line with what we’ve seen in all these other southern states, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, where Democrats won these really huge victories, some that nobody saw coming in South Carolina. some that were so close, like Louisiana, where the Democrat just fell short. This was a theme throughout the South. There was big investment in black organizing, and you had a situation in which, in the wake of the destruction of the vote.
Jen Rubin
Voting Rights Act.
Ari Berman
It really, amplified the stakes of all these races.
Jen Rubin
And you and I had talked about this, you’d written about this, that there was the potential for a backlash against Calais, that you can’t gerrymander a state, and that African American voters were simply not going to put up with this. What happened in Mississippi is even more astounding, because they have had to overcome a second hurdle to voting. Talk to us about the process that the Secretary of State went through in trying to deactivate Over 230,000 voters, many of whom are Black, most of those whom are Democratic voters.
Ari Berman
Yeah, the Secretary of State in Mississippi purged 1 in 9 voters from the rolls ahead of the 2026 election. He essentially used an inaccurate data broker firm to do it. He paid $50,000, which is nothing, to basically purge his state voter rolls. He was warned before the election this was gonna be very inaccurate, and what happened was people showed up on election day. and they were told, you’re not registered to vote. And so now there’s this frantic process to try to correct some of these problems. Some people were just flat-out told they weren’t able to vote at all, and so they can’t do anything about it, but the people that cast what is now known as these affidavit ballots, there is an effort to try to get them counted. And, I mean, the good news, at least, is the Secretary of State, if we can take him at his word, said that nearly 80% of these affidavit ballots were counted, and Scott Colum’s lead has grown each time these votes are counted, but this should never have happened in the first place. We wouldn’t need to be talking about these affidavit ballots if Mississippi’s voter rolls were managed properly in the first place.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. And essentially, he took these lists from an outside credit agency. Unverified, and civil rights groups warned him, didn’t they, before the election? These are filled with errors, this is gonna be a mess.
Ari Berman
They did, and this is exactly what the Department of Justice was trying to get California and other states to do, by the way, was to purge their voter rolls based on inaccurate information. Those states said no, and the federal courts upheld that decision, but in Mississippi, this didn’t go through the normal legal process. The Secretary of State just did it. And this is a state that ranks dead last when it comes to making it easier to vote. It has no early voting. You have to have an excuse to get an absentee ballot. The Secretary of State is purging voter rolls, so… The fact that Scott Colom’s on the verge of winning this race, given not just the history of Mississippi, but the recent history of Mississippi is all the more remarkable.
Jen Rubin
And what’s remarkable is not only did all of these voters turn out, but then they went the extra mile to fill out these affidavit ballots. Which is why, as they’re coming in, the irony is that they’re overwhelmingly Democrats, because these were the people that the Secretary of State didn’t want to vote, who tried to purge off the system.
Ari Berman
Yeah, and I imagine the same kind of thing is gonna happen with absentee ballots, which are due by the end of the day on Tuesday. That’s probably also something that’s gonna break more strongly for Scott Colom. So, I mean, it’s clear that Mississippi Republicans did everything they could to try to prevent this from happening. They had an exceptionally weak Republican candidate, an exceptionally good Democratic candidate. And then they had not just the national issues that we’ve all talked about, but these issues of the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and other things that really have made an impact across the South. And, you know, people said. before the election, Mississippi was gonna be in play, a lot of people didn’t believe it, but it turns out those people on the ground were right.
Jen Rubin
You did a lot of reporting, for example, in Alabama. What happens in Mississippi doesn’t necessarily stay in Mississippi. What do you think not only Mississippi results, Texas results, Georgia results, how those may resonate through the rest of the South, and what impact we may see In state elections, for example, Missouri has, sorry, Mississippi has all kinds of elections next year, and then 2028. Do you think this will have a ripple effect throughout the South?
Ari Berman
Yes, I believe it’s already having a ripple effect in the South. You saw Democrats and Black voters fight back against all of these gerrymandering efforts. Republicans fell way short of their projected gains because of this. They wanted to flip 15 seats, and it looks like they only picked up 2 or 3 from the redistricting. And then, of course, there was a lot of other seats that they lost. in the process. And then they made all these statewide races competitive, that may not have been competitive otherwise. And so, I’ve argued for a long time that, morally, we need to invest in the South, because it’s the front line of the civil rights struggle, but now it’s not just a moral argument, it’s a political argument. competitive. I mean, if you can win a Senate race in Mississippi, if you can come within 2 points of winning a Senate race in Louisiana, why wouldn’t you contest every race in the country? Doug Jones only lost in Alabama by 4 points. I mean, there are voters up for grabs here. an elevated black vote, white voters souring on Trump, the demographic change in the region. The South is competitive. It’s a necessity for Democrats to compete there, because when it comes to the next census, the South is gonna gain people, and the Midwest and the Northeast are gonna lose.
Jen Rubin
Oh.
Ari Berman
And so, Democrats are gonna have to win the South out of necessity alone, and 2026 gives them a lot to build on.
Jen Rubin
It is interesting that in some respects, Democrats have almost written off the South. They kind of threw up their hands and said, well. We can’t win a presidential race in Florida, or in Texas, or in Georgia, so we’ll just kind of leave those and try to do our best and win in the Midwest, or win in the rest of the country. That maybe changes the calculus a lot for 2028.
Ari Berman
I think the calculus has absolutely changed. I mean, I believe Texas is in play now in 2028. At the very least, you need to make Republicans spend money there, assuming we just don’t get rid of the Electoral College altogether, which is another conversation.
Jen Rubin
We’ll talk about that, we will.
Ari Berman
But, I mean, you look at what happened in these states. I mean, Georgia and North Carolina, of course, they’re in play, but Democrats could have contested Florida more. Angie Nixon got almost no support. Democrats didn’t spend any money in Louisiana, and only lost by 2 points. They barely spent any money in Mississippi. I mean, people went down there at the last minute, they threw some ads in the last minute, but this was Totally being done, by… people on the ground in Mississippi with very little help from the National Party. So, this was a wake-up call for National Democrats not to write off the South, to spend more money in the South, and these battles are not over, because all these Southern legislatures are gonna come back, and they’re gonna draw new districts, and they’re gonna try to wipe out the Democrats that survived, or get rid of the last remaining black Democrats, and so This battle from 2026 is going to have to carry over to 27 and 28, because these issues of redistricting and other related issues are not over.
Jen Rubin
The election was so… significant, so dramatic, that you had, as of this moment, 12 legislative chambers that changed. 6 are now completely in Democratic hands. You have Democrats in… So-called red states that are now governors. It also changes the way those states are governed on everything from education to Medicaid expansion. Talk to us a little bit about what this means in terms of the state politics and the governance that people in those states are going to get now.
Ari Berman
It’s huge. I just saw a stat that Democratic governors are going to represent 75% of the U.S. population, and so three-quarters of people are going to live in states governed by Democrats, and a lot of really important states have new trifectas, where Democrats can actually do something, because I know there’s a lot of expectations for Democrats in Congress, but Trump is still president, right? So there’s limits to what they can do. But in the states, Democrats can actually start passing popular policies. In Wisconsin, in Michigan, in Arizona, in Nevada, in Alaska, I mean, all of these places. And some of these things were really inconceivable, like Democrats winning all of these statewide races in Texas, flipping the Texas House, flipping the Georgia House. I mean, this was stuff that was on nobody’s radar. Flipping the North Carolina House. becoming one vote, that they may flip the North Carolina Senate. I mean, you’re talking about making inroads in some of the most gerrymandered state legislative chambers in the country, and so I think Democrats have a responsibility to govern, but also this shows that, you know, when there’s these big national waves, some of these structural impediments can be overcome, and so that’s, I think, just an argument for the Democratic Party to keep trying to build on these gains, and flip the remaining chambers, in 2028, when presumably, Trump will still be very unpopular, and a lot of the political conditions will be quite similar.
Jen Rubin
Now, there are some states where Democrats are trying to do their own redistricting, and they couldn’t get it accomplished by this election. New York. Virginia went to the state Supreme Court, got reversed. Maryland. Given the… reaction to gerrymandering. Do Democrats go forward with those? Are they going to be nervous about incurring the wrath of the voters? Or are they going to put the… Pedal to the metal and go forward and get as many of these states wrapped up as they can.
Ari Berman
Well, it was interesting, there was a ballot initiative in Maryland that gave approval for them to do this, so that seemed like a signal from voters that they could, move ahead. And, I mean, if you just look at the math, I mean, Democrats did pick up a bunch of seats, obviously, but, I mean, Republicans still redrew in half a dozen states, and Democrats were only able to do it in two. And so I think Democrats are gonna still feel like they’re gonna go forward in places. maybe the thing is they try to shore up some of the Democrats that won now.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Ari Berman
As opposed to, you know, flipping more seats, because some of these districts that flipped are probably pretty tenuous holds for 2028. And so, I would imagine it’s going to go forward, but I also think that Democrats have to keep pushing for a ban on partisan gerrymandering and a new Voting Rights Act, because I don’t think voters like this all that much.
Jen Rubin
Right.
Ari Berman
In blue states, they held their nose and did it in reaction to what Trump and Republicans were doing, but I think if you… I think if you ask most Americans, they don’t really like gerrymandering when it happens once a decade. The idea that it would happen multiple times a decade is Yes. It’s pretty loathsome, so I would say they’re gonna do it, but I think the longer-term goal is to build support for this, and I would even say try to pass it now, and start talking about it and making it an issue on the campaign trail.
Jen Rubin
Interesting. Well, it’s very interesting. One of the big winners, I didn’t expect it, is in New York. Kathy Hochul, who won by a ton. She, of course, also saw gains in the U.S. House, and that’s one of the states that still has gerrymandering yet to be completed. So it’s going to be interesting to see what she does there with her… Both her a congressional delegation, but also her state delegation.
Ari Berman
For sure. I mean, I think in New York, there’s a lot of yearning and energy. to try to have the lines be more fair. That Democrats did well, but, I mean, the fact is, they tried to redraw the lines, they… it was rejected by a court, the lines that were put in place were not very favorable, to New York Democrats, and I think the idea is that New York is an overwhelmingly blue state, and that there are still some districts that could be flipped here. And that, yeah, there’s these huge majorities in Congress, but we don’t know how long those are going to last in terms of the next election, right? So, I would expect New York to move forward on this. I think there’s going to be strong support to move forward on this, and then they’re just going to have to convince the voters. I mean, the good news is that in almost all of these blue states, they have to convince the voters to be able to do it. And so there will be a process of legitimacy that occurs in these states that did not occur in the red states, where voters had no say about it.
Jen Rubin
They’re just kidding.
Ari Berman
That would mainly think there’d be less of a backlash, because if voters don’t like it, they just won’t approve it, and it won’t happen. But if it does happen, the voters will basically say they’re okay with it, and therefore you wouldn’t expect the type of backlash that we saw in all of these red states that did it, and voters really didn’t like it.
Jen Rubin
That is an important point. In Texas and Florida, they just did it. It didn’t work. Voters didn’t like it. But, as you say, in Maryland, for example, they just approved it. Last topic I want to talk to you about, and I love this topic, because I’ve been on it for a while, and that is the national popular vote. Compact. We could get rid of the Electoral College. Tell us what that is. Why that’s possible now, and whether that can actually be in place for the 2028 presidential election.
Ari Berman
Yeah, this was really one of the big sleeper consequences of the midterms, was that there is this compact that basically says if you get to 270 electoral votes among states, they will award their presidential electors to the winner of the popular vote.
Jen Rubin
The national popular vote.
Ari Berman
Exactly, it gets rid of the Electoral College without needing a constitutional amendment, which is very difficult to do. Before the election, it was at 222 electoral votes, with Virginia being the latest state to sign on, but then Dems won trifectas in all of these states that add up to 61 electoral votes. So, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, possibly Alaska, depending on how you count that. That means that there is enough support to get over the 270 votes needed to enact this compact. That would be huge, because this would quite literally change the way that presidential elections work, get rid of the fundamentally undemocratic electoral college that shuts out 80% of Americans from having a choice for president. Now, the states have to pass it, and it has to withstand legal challenges, right? And I am very concerned about a more.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Ari Berman
what the U.S. Supreme Court might say about this, but the fact is, now we’re at least in the realm of possibility of it passing, which no one saw coming before the midterms.
Jen Rubin
And think about what this means. Let’s come back to Mississippi. No one campaigns for President of the United States in Mississippi now. Because you’re never gonna win it. But now, if you can go into Mississippi and get however many votes, hundreds of thousands of votes, a few million votes, that’s worth it for politicians. Doesn’t that change the entire way we look at the presidential election? Who matters? Who counts? Who gets listened to?
Ari Berman
For sure, because so many states are written off because they’re either too blue or too red, and a small number of battleground states get all of the attention. Most of them in the battleground states don’t even like it, because they’re inundated with TV ads.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, it’s…
Ari Berman
And, you know, it’s really hard to convince someone in New York or California or Mississippi or Wyoming, your vote matters in a presidential election, when those states are basically predetermined in terms of who they’re gonna vote for. So, so many places are written off. There’s a civil rights component to this, too. I mean, during you had a situation where Black voters were disenfranchised, not to mention the three-fifths Compromise, when enslaved people were counted as three-fifths of a person, but the Southern whites got more representation because of that, both during slavery, during Jim Crow, and now, again, they’re trying to disenfranchise Black voters, but they’re not going to have any penalties in the Electoral college. And so this is a kind of way to ensure fairness, ensure that every vote matters equally in presidential elections. And the Electoral College is very unpopular. I mean, studies consistently show that 7 in 10 Americans want to get rid of it, and there’s a strong argument to make that if you are a Democrat in a red state, or a Republican in a blue state, you have a good reason to get behind this, too.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Last question for you, Ari. I interviewed a few weeks back you and your colleague who wrote this magnificent and historic piece on how, unfortunately, our U.S. Supreme Court was sort of revisiting, reliving the process of disenfranchising African Americans that went on after the Civil War, after the Civil Rights Amendments. after Reconstruction. I’m just curious, now that you look back after these midterms. Looking back on the whole scope of this, just emotionally, intellectually, what’s your big picture take on what’s going on?
Ari Berman
My big picture take is that this Supreme Court decision really resonated with Black voters in the South. I mean, this was the equivalent to them of the Dobbs decision in 2022 that really motivated women voters. And it didn’t get talked about in the run-up to the election because of all the other things that were going on, the cost of everything, the war, the corruption, but it really, on an emotional level. reverberated. And you even see it in majority black counties in the South. Turnout increased by a lot. In other parts of the country where these threats are more abstract, you didn’t see the same kind of increases. And so there was something specific that was going on with Black voters in the South, and I think there was a really strong desire not to go backwards. And that propelled so many new kind of candidates, including in very unlikely places like Mississippi. But this would be an ongoing struggle. I don’t want to feel like, because that.
Jen Rubin
Yes.
Ari Berman
raised in the midterms, this is over. I mean, like I said…
Jen Rubin
This is decades.
Ari Berman
These southern states are gonna come back, they’re gonna try to draw black members of Congress out of their districts, but also. at the local level. And we can’t count on a 2026-type wave to save Black mayors, or Black city council members or Black county commissioners. And so, I still think we need these protections that the Supreme Court took away, but it was really gratifying to see voters actually stand up and say, we’re not going to allow this to happen on our watch.
Jen Rubin
It is amazing. You do kind of wonder what’s going through John Roberts’ mind right now. The man who has single-handedly tried to dismantle the entire voting rights legislative structure, and now to see this result.
Ari Berman
You should get ready for a few more colleagues on the court.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, exactly, right. 13. 13, that’s the number, guys.
Ari Berman
Four new colleagues, that’s what he can get ready for after 2028.
Jen Rubin
Ari, thank you so much for all your reporting. We’re gonna stick with you, obviously. We’re gonna… travel the rest of the road in Mississippi and redistricting, and into 2028. Thanks so much for all you’re doing, and we look forward to having you back!
Ari Berman
Great to talk to you again, Jen. Thanks, anytime.
Jen Rubin
Take care.
