Mississippi Regulations § 1-10-6.1 Adding Contested Candidates to Official Ballot

In the event that a candidate has met the qualification deadline but has not been certified by the appropriate election officials, it is the policy of the Secretary of State's Office to initially include the name of that candidate in the Statewide Elections Management System (SEMS) under the following condition:

Candidates who are known to be in the process of exercising their statutory right of appeal will be given the consideration of proceeding with the process of inputting the candidate information and building the database.

Candidates who are unknown or who did not exercise their statutory right of appeal will not be included on the ballot.

Immediately upon ruling from the appeal process, action must be taken by the appropriate election official to mark the candidate status in SEMS as Certified if the ruling is for their name to appear on the ballot, or Withdrawn if the name is to be stricken from the ballot. Depending on the timing of the ruling, additional modification and verification may need to be enacted in the GEMS database as well.

The integration between the Statewide Elections Management System (SEMS) and the TSX Voting System provides many advantages to both the counties and the State in creating the TSX database and documenting election results. In the ballot build process, it is easier and less time consuming to remove a candidate name from the ballot than it is to add a new candidate name in SEMS and the TSX system after the process of building the ballot is underway.

As with all ballot preparation and approval, it is the responsibility of the officials in charge of the election to ensure the accuracy of the final ballot product.