A week after Election Day, provisional and cured ballots turned a Republican lead into a Democratic win in North Carolina’s 3rd District, stretched a two-digit Democratic edge into a 335-vote lead in the 5th, and carried Scott Colom past Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi. The rules that decided these races were set in state law before the election, and one of them was upheld by the Supreme Court in June.
On election night, Rep. Greg Murphy (R) led Democrat Raymond Smith by 233 votes in North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District. Eight days later, after county boards counted provisional ballots and absentee ballots whose defects voters had fixed, Smith was ahead by 293. Murphy, a Greenville physician who has held the seat since a 2019 special election, conceded on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Unofficial State Board of Elections figures reported by Carolina Journal show Smith with 118,488 votes (49.43%), Murphy with 118,195 (49.31%) and Libertarian Daniel Cavender with 3,007 (1.25%).
Two other contests followed a similar arc, though neither was a clean “flip.” In the 5th District, Democrat Chuck Hubbard led Rep. Virginia Foxx (R) by 99 votes on election night; Foxx moved ahead at points as provisional ballots came in on Tuesday, Nov. 10, but Hubbard finished the night 335 votes ahead. In Mississippi, the race that drew national attention was not a House contest at all but the U.S. Senate race, where Colom’s 65-vote lead on the morning after the election grew to 4,669 before the Associated Press (AP) called the race for him on Nov. 11.
What most coverage misses
Much of the national coverage has framed these outcomes as a story of voter enthusiasm or of a Republican redistricting plan that backfired. Both may be true. What gets less attention is that every one of these late shifts happened inside deadlines that state legislatures had set before a single vote was cast, and that the ballots which moved the margins were the categories that conservatives have spent years debating: provisional ballots, mail ballots corrected after Election Day, and, in Mississippi, mail ballots that arrived after Election Day.
In North Carolina, the window for counting those ballots was widened this year. Session Law 2026-60, passed by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, is titled in its first part “Extend Time Period for Curing Deficiencies and Initial Counting of Ballots to the Fifth Business Day After the Election.” It moved several cure deadlines from noon on the third business day after the election to noon on the fifth. For the Nov. 3 election, that fifth business day was Tuesday, Nov. 10, the day both NC-3 and NC-5 moved.
In Mississippi, state law counts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day if they arrive within five business days. The Republican National Committee (RNC) challenged that rule all the way to the Supreme Court, and lost. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, decided June 29, 2026, a 5-4 majority led by Justice Amy Coney Barrett held that the federal Election Day statutes fix when votes must be cast, not when they must be received. “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose,” Barrett wrote. Justice Samuel Alito, in dissent, warned that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”
Background: how the late count works in each state
North Carolina
North Carolina requires civilian absentee ballots to arrive by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. Ballots from military and overseas voters that were mailed by Election Day are counted if they arrive by 5 p.m. on the Thursday after, which this year was Nov. 12, according to NC Newsline. Two other groups of ballots are resolved after Election Day. Provisional ballots are cast when a voter’s eligibility cannot be confirmed at the polls; county boards research each one before deciding whether it counts. Absentee ballots with fixable problems, such as a missing signature or witness information, can be “cured” by the voter. Under Session Law 2026-60, cure paperwork had to reach the county board by noon on the fifth business day.
Results remain unofficial until county canvass meetings, set for Friday, Nov. 13. Under North Carolina General Statute 163-182.7, a losing candidate in a non-statewide race supervised by the State Board may demand a recount if the margin is “not more than one percent (1%) of the total votes cast in the ballot item.” The written demand must reach the State Board “by noon on the second business day after the county canvass.”
Mississippi
Mississippi has no general early-voting period, something Colom has called on the state to adopt. Voters whose registration is in question at the polls cast an affidavit ballot, the state’s term for a provisional ballot. Voters who needed to show identification after the fact had until Nov. 10 to do so at their circuit clerk’s office, the same date by which mail ballots postmarked by Election Day had to arrive, Mississippi Today reported. Mississippi also has no automatic recount law; a recount in a statewide race would require a court order following a lawsuit, and state law handles ballot challenges county by county rather than statewide.
Deep dive: the three races, step by step
NC-3: Murphy’s 233-vote lead becomes a 293-vote loss
The 3rd District was redrawn in 2025. According to Carolina Journal, Republican-leaning precincts were moved into the 1st District, and Wayne, Wilson, Greene and Lenoir counties were moved from the 1st into the 3rd. Smith and other Democrats have said the aim was to make the neighboring 1st District harder for Democratic Rep. Don Davis to hold. Davis won anyway, defeating Republican Laurie Buckhout, and the reshaped 3rd became competitive enough for a Democrat to take a seat Republicans had held since 1995.
Murphy had declared victory earlier. Smith disputed that, pointing to roughly 6,000 provisional ballots still to be counted across the district’s nine counties, according to The Hill. The net change from election night to the post-cure count was 526 votes: Murphy’s 233-vote lead turned into Smith’s 293-vote lead. Smith’s final margin is about 0.12% of the 239,690 votes cast for the three candidates, well inside the recount threshold. Murphy’s statement congratulated Smith and, as reported by WRAL, said he expected Smith to serve “with honor and integrity,” which Carolina Journal read as a signal he will not seek a recount.
NC-5: Foxx briefly leads, then falls 335 behind
Foxx has held the 5th District since 2005, and it was considered a safe Republican seat. With all 230 precincts reporting on election night, Hubbard led by 99 votes. Foxx did not concede. “Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of our healthy republic,” she said in a statement, pointing to overseas and provisional ballots still to come.
On Nov. 10, as counties reported provisional and cured ballots, Foxx pulled ahead at times before Hubbard’s lead settled. Unofficial State Board totals at the end of the night showed Hubbard at 139,788 and Foxx at 139,453, a 335-vote margin. Libertarian Robert Tuffman drew 7,579 votes, more than 22 times the gap between the two leaders. Rockingham County delayed reporting its provisional results because its board meeting ran late, according to WXII. The race is within the 1% recount threshold, and Foxx, according to WRAL, has until later this month to decide whether to request one.
Mississippi Senate: from 65 votes to 4,669
At 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4, with 95.6% of the vote counted, Colom led Hyde-Smith 462,857 to 462,792, a 65-vote gap. Independent Ty Pinkins had 19,938. The Hyde-Smith campaign said it was “closely monitoring the remaining count” and remained “confident that when every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted, Mississippians will have reelected Cindy Hyde-Smith.”
By late that night Colom’s lead was 1,138, Magnolia Tribune reported, with about 3,600 mail ballots outstanding according to the Secretary of State’s office. On Thursday, Nov. 5, AP figures cited by Mississippi Today put Colom at 466,226 and Hyde-Smith at 464,502, a gap of 1,724 votes. (Mississippi Today’s text gives the gap as 1,764; the vote totals it cites produce 1,724.) By the end of Nov. 10 the lead was just over 2,600, with 2,578 mail ballots still uncounted and an unknown number of affidavit ballots pending, according to Mississippi Today and The New York Times. Secretary of State Michael Watson said that as of 5 p.m. on Nov. 9 more than 15,500 affidavit ballots had been processed, and just over three-quarters had been accepted.
On Nov. 11, Jackson County, a Republican stronghold on the Gulf Coast, reported more than 2,000 additional votes without narrowing the gap. Colom’s lead stood at 4,669 when the AP called the race that evening. Hyde-Smith conceded the same evening. “I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” she said in a video, as quoted by MS NOW. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
Counter-arguments and complications
Republicans raised concerns about the count while it was under way. Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Mike Hurst vowed on Nov. 5 to “fight like hell” to ensure that only “legally cast” ballots were counted, and estimated about 20,000 ballots were outstanding. He said, without naming counties or offering evidence, that many outstanding affidavit ballots were in Republican-leaning areas. Jackson County’s late report, from a Republican stronghold, did not narrow the gap. Hurst also said he would accept the results if Colom won lawfully. The National Republican Senatorial Committee asked county clerks to set aside affidavit ballots; a former head of the Secretary of State’s elections division, Kyle Kirkpatrick, said that once such ballots are scanned it is “impossible to determine” which voter cast them.
From the other direction, Colom said Watson had “created chaos” with the affidavit rules. Voters, including students at Tougaloo College, described being sent between Hinds and Madison counties to fix their ballots. A 2025 voter-roll maintenance partnership that used Experian address data marked some voters as inactive or moved, forcing them to vote by affidavit; Watson defended the process as “a safety net for errors” that would produce “more accurate voter rolls” and “decrease opportunities for voter fraud.” Experian said its data “was not designed or intended to validate voter records.”
Analysis (RSN): there is no public evidence in any of these three races of fraud or of ballots counted outside the statutory rules. The legitimate debate is over the rules themselves. A longer cure window and a mail-ballot grace period both trade speed and finality for inclusiveness, and they guarantee that close races will be decided days after Election Day, when partisan suspicion is at its highest. North Carolina Republicans chose to lengthen that window this year. Mississippi’s grace period survived a Republican legal challenge. Conservatives who want fast, final results on election night will have to win that argument in state legislatures, because, as the Justice Department’s failed bid to set aside 20,000 California ballots and the federal voter-roll ruling showed, courts have been reluctant to disturb ballots once they are cast. RSN tracked the wave of court fights over election rules before the 2014 midterms, and the problem of military ballots arriving after the deadline, one reason states keep post-election windows, was the subject of our 2012 coverage.
What is established, disputed and not established
Established:
- NC-3: Murphy led by 233 on election night; after provisional and cured absentee ballots, Smith leads 118,488 to 118,195 (293 votes) in unofficial results. Murphy conceded on Nov. 11.
- NC-5: Hubbard led by 99 on election night and by 335 (139,788 to 139,453) after the Nov. 10 count, in unofficial results.
- Mississippi Senate: Colom led by 65 votes on the morning of Nov. 4 and by 4,669 when the AP called the race on Nov. 11. Hyde-Smith conceded.
- North Carolina’s cure deadline was extended to the fifth business day by Session Law 2026-60; Mississippi’s five-business-day mail-ballot grace period was upheld in Watson v. RNC.
Disputed:
- Whether Mississippi’s affidavit-ballot process and Experian-based roll maintenance wrongly burdened eligible voters, as Colom and voting-rights groups say, or protected roll accuracy, as Watson says.
- Whether extended cure windows and mail-ballot grace periods are sound policy.
Not established:
- Final certified totals. North Carolina canvasses are on Nov. 13, and late military and overseas ballots or eligibility challenges could still change NC figures slightly.
- Whether Foxx will request a recount in NC-5.
- The exact breakdown, by ballot type, of how many provisional versus cured absentee votes each candidate gained. We found no official district-wide tally.
- Any late flip in a Mississippi U.S. House race. We found no such race; the late shift in Mississippi was in the Senate contest.
Sources: Carolina Journal (Nov. 11); WRAL (Nov. 11); NC Newsline (Nov. 11); N.C. Session Law 2026-60; N.C.G.S. 163-182.7; WLOX/Gray News (Nov. 4); Magnolia Tribune (Nov. 5); Mississippi Today (Nov. 5); Mississippi Today/The New York Times (Nov. 10); MS NOW (Nov. 11); Votebeat on Watson v. RNC (June 29); Watson v. RNC opinion (Cornell LII).
Featured image: “Bag of 51 provisional ballots” by Joe Hall, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped for display.
How this article was made: Right Side News researched and drafted this article with the help of AI tools. Sources are linked so readers can check them. Spot an error? Tell us in the comments and we will correct it.
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