Secretary of State Michael Watson speaks on upcoming election

STARKVILLE, MISS. (WCBI) – Secretary of State Michael Watson stops by the Kiwanis Club of Starkville to discuss the upcoming election.

During his speech, Watson encouraged everyone to make sure they are registered to vote by October 5th.

Watson says the country is expecting to see an increase in absentee voting because of the Coronavirus.

Watson also spoke on mail-in voting and how to prevent fraud.

“Making sure that we’ve got clean voter rolls. We have seen in Mississippi, there are 33 counties that have 90 percent or more of their voting age population showing as registered voters. What you typically see when people are purging the rolls properly, that number is going to be around 75 percent. Of those 33 counties, there are five with over 100 percent. That’s impossible. So either dead people are on the voter rolls, folks that no longer live here, people that have moved out of state, or out of their region or county.”

Watson says we can’t even begin to talk about voting by mail until Mississippi voter rolls have been cleaned out.