If Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., has one regret this election cycle, it may be her decision to block Mississippi District Attorney Scott Colom from becoming a federal judge in 2023.

Three years later, untethered to a federal lifetime appointment, Colom decided to run for Senate and is now within striking distance of unseating Hyde-Smith in the deep red state, where a partisan battle over vote counting intensified Thursday evening.

Poised to become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, Colom’s narrow lead widened.

Just as she prevented him from becoming a federal judge, Hyde-Smith let it be known on Thursday that she wasn’t prepared to let Colom take her place in the U.S. Senate without a fight.

In dueling letters to Mississippi election officials Thursday, the GOP and Democratic Senate campaigns argued over the segregation of provisional ballots — also known as affidavit ballots — as it became clear that the razor-thin race would likely be decided by the thousands of provisional ballots that are legally allowed to be counted until Nov. 10.

Lawyers for Hyde-Smith demanded the “immediate separation, secure custody, and preservation” of all affidavit ballots, saying these measures were “necessary” to ensure the ballots’ eligibility.

Colom’s lawyers responded, calling those demands unlawful. “Those demands have no basis in Mississippi law, and if you depart from ordinary election procedures as you have been asked to do, you will violate Mississippi voters’ rights and Mississippi election law,” they wrote.

Lawyers for both the Colom and Hyde-Smith campaigns are on the ground in Mississippi, the only state in the country that doesn’t have a recount law.

The Mississippi Democratic nominee has turned his once long-shot bid to unseat Hyde-Smith into a 1,813-vote lead over the GOP incumbent, leaving the contest too close to call as of Thursday evening.

As the state counts outstanding absentee and provisional ballots in the coming days and the nation holds its breath, what happens next could depend on how wide the margin is when a winner is called. Although Mississippi lacks a ballot recount provision, some legal scholars have suggested a judge could order one.

Marc Elias, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration who has litigated several election lawsuits involving the president, announced that his firm would lead Colom’s legal effort. Several Elias Law Group attorneys were working in Mississippi on Thursday to determine how many provisional ballots remained outstanding in each of the state’s 82 counties, a source familiar with the effort told MS NOW.

Another Democratic source with firsthand knowledge of proceedings, granted anonymity to speak freely about the consequential race, told MS NOW that Democrats had observers in every county across the state reporting updates on the count.

“They are going through each ballot one at a time, doing the verification, and they’re moving at a good clip, so we should be done in pretty short order here,” the source said.

Neither Hyde-Smith’s Senate staff nor her campaign staff responded to multiple requests for comment from MS NOW on Thursday.

The wait for a winner could drag on for days because Mississippi law allows absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to five business days after the election to be counted — a law that was challenged by the Republican National Committee but upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June. An estimated 3,600 mail ballots remained outstanding as of Wednesday, according to the latest update from the state’s top election official. There were also tens of thousands of provisional ballots to be counted by Tuesday’s deadline.

But Republicans are fighting to the end to prevent Democrats from claiming Hyde-Smith’s seat as their eighth Senate flip in the bloodletting of their historic victory.

Mike Hurst, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, said Thursday that the state party was working “hand-in-glove” with Hyde-Smith’s campaign to prepare for potential legal action.

“At the end of the day, if the facts show that our laws were not followed, we will be ready to act swiftly, and we will not hesitate to hold election officials accountable,” Hurst said at a news conference.

Hyde-Smith was one of eight Republican senators who voted to object to the 2020 presidential election results shortly after a mob of Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

With no official mechanism in place, candidates themselves can’t request a recount. But Hyde-Smith and Colom could both request a “ballot box exam,” which would trigger a legal challenge if problems are identified.

Hyde-Smith’s campaign continued to publicly project confidence, writing in a post on X that “thousands of votes remain to be counted from dozens of Republican counties, and we are confident those votes will reinforce her path to victory.”The campaign noted that it was “prepared” for “Democratic lawyers to pull out every stop.”During a meet and greet with voters at a local diner in Jackson, Mississippi, on Thursday, Colom told MS NOW that he and his campaign were “prepared to defend the process” and win. A win for Colom — a Black Democrat defeating a Republican incumbent senator in a ruby-red Southern state — would be among the biggest upsets of the 2026 midterm elections.

Colom cited a statistic he said would work in his favor: that Democrats in recent elections have tended to use mail-in voting at higher rates than Republicans. Voters in his state this year had more than doubled the 2022 absentee participation total, according to data from the Mississippi secretary of state’s office.

“Because I follow Mississippi elections, I know how things go,” Colom told MS NOW. “Like I know that where the ballots are, they trend Democratic. I know that absentee and affidavits trend Democratic. We’re going to win.”“It’s all over but the countin’,” he added.

The Democratic source with firsthand knowledge of the proceedings described Mississippi’s ballot counting process as simple and straightforward. “They count once and that’s it,” the source told MS NOW, raising skepticism that a judge could order a recount.

“There’s no legal basis for a judge to order a recount,” the source added. “None.”