CBS News' Caitlin Huey-Burns questions Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith at the U.S. Capitol Nov. 10, 2026 (Photo: Screen capture)
CBS News' Caitlin Huey-Burns caught up with Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on Capitol Hill Tuesday to ask her about the progress of the final count in the Mississippi Senate race. She didn't appear happy about one of the questions.
Democrat Scott Colom remains in the lead. Tuesday at 5 p.m. is the final deadline for people who filled out affidavit ballots to provide the proper information to ensure their votes are counted.
"We got a few thousand out, so we're feeling very optimistic," Hyde-Smith told the CBS correspondent.
Huey-Burns then asked why things were so close. Hyde-Smith's face flashed wide-eyed; she furrowed her brow and walked into a meeting room away from reporters.
One of the biggest problems that could have impacted Hyde-Smith is that the state's voter rolls were purged using the credit agency Experian to update them. Normally, the state uses data from the U.S. Postal Service.
"The use of unverified data from Experian has caused a nightmare at ballot boxes across the state," The Grio reported on Monday. "Thousands of registered voters were deemed inactive, prompting them to file an affidavit ballot. It has thrown chaos into an already unusual Senate race, one where the independent on the ballot, Ty Pinkins, previously ran for another Senate seat in 2024 and has conducted interviews stating that he was pulling votes from Hyde-Smith, not Colom."
Secretary of State Michael Watson should have known using Experian to purge voter rolls was a bad idea, as the company reportedly warned him the data was unverified, The Atlantic reported. In fact, Watson's own state sued Experian 12 years ago over unverified data.
To make matters worse, Experian hasn't provided any information to Mississippi since 2025, but the state continued to use the data to purge the rolls. At first, 50,000 voters were deemed "inactive" between July 2025 and March 2026 because there were address discrepancies. By Election Day, the number ballooned to 230,000 voters who were forced to fill out provisional ballots.
The election-night surprise became clear as results rolled in over the days that followed.
NBC News' Steve Kornacki was shocked to see the vote data as the race remained too close to call. Early Wednesday morning, Colom led by 50 votes, but that gap shrank to about 35 and then 43 votes.
One week after the election, Colom has opened a lead of 2,535 with an estimated 26,000 votes outstanding, NBC News said. That means Hyde-Smith would need to win 53.9 percent of the remaining vote to match or overtake Colom. It isn't outside the realm of possibility.
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