The results of the midterm elections in Mississippi are finally in. The deadline has passed, and, to the state's disgrace, it is Mississippi's own fault that not all votes were counted.

How could this happen?

The state had hired a commercial firm to verify the addresses of registered voters.

This firm relied on a database they possessed, presenting it as the "sole and best" source available.

That turned out to be a mistake; the database was outdated and inaccurate.

Consequently, 230,000 voters were suddenly required to provide proof of their actual address, even though most had done nothing wrong. The issue stemmed entirely from the use of a flawed database.

As a result, their votes were deemed invalid until they could prove their place of residence within a specified timeframe.

The documentation submitted by these voters had to be verified, one by one, by the election commission. This process could not be completed everywhere before the deadline; when the cutoff arrived, officials simply reported the progress they had made up to that point.

We now have a clear picture of how Republican-led states might further disrupt elections in the future, because this form of electoral sabotage actually works.

Or, at least, it works to a certain extent. In the end, the Democratic candidate won, to everyone's surprise, because Democratic voters proved to be exceptionally motivated. The margin was fewer than 4,700 votes. Every vote truly matters!

P.S. The question remains: were the Democratic voters who had to jump through these extra hoops more motivated than their Republican counterparts, or was it simply the case that a disproportionately large number of them were, ostensibly, listed at the "wrong" address? Was this truly a database error, or was it a massive attempt at election sabotage in the Deep South of the U.S.?

Honestly, it's the latter. That's precisely why it's all the more wonderful that the Democratic candidate won. Now, he just needs to ensure that this cannot happen again.

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