By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
Senior Status Judge Lamar Pickard has been assigned to hear the case brought by Mt. Olive business owner and former Alderwoman/Mayor Pro Tem, Marcia Hull, challenging the June 3, 2025, mayoral election where she lost by 43 votes. She alleged numerous irregularities in the process, policy, and procedure that, taken as a whole, violated the law and destroyed the election integrity, usurping the will of the voters. She was represented in her cause by Scherrie L. Prince, Esq. Hull filed suit against the now three-term incumbent mayor, James Clifton Kelly, III, the Mt. Olive municipal clerk – Breyon Magee, and the Mt. Olive Election Commission.
Attorney J. Larry Buffington, a former Simpson County Chancery Judge who was publicly reprimanded in 2011 for an abuse of authority incident in 2008, and subsequently removed from the bench by the voters, per WLBT on July 5, 2011, served as counsel for Mt. Olive mayor James Kelly. Buffington’s son, John Alan Buffington, served as the attorney for the town of Mt. Olive, and also represented the election commission.
No doubt you will see and read other news coverage of this bench trial, yet nothing will be mentioned about race. Ask yourself why that is? Don’t all eyes see and feel racial issues? Certainly, they must, but there are forces involved that would have you believe that everything is just honky dory in Mississippi. This case wasn’t about race, but that’s not the whole story. The case was about alleged violations of law, election process irregularities, and fairness. Yet the case happened against a prominent backdrop of race. Mt. Olive is a 74 percent African American town, yet they reelected a white mayor for the third time, this past June – if all the results are to be believed.
As heard from attorneys and witnesses during the trial, the Mt. Olive mayoral election had many concerning elements. The election day ballots, the ones counted in real time by a new ballot counting machine – used for the very first time in Mt. Olive – reported the results as 120 for Alderwoman Hull and 118 for incumbent mayor Kelly. Then came the absentee ballots – 58 in total. Testimony reveals that the previous mayoral election had just 2 absentee ballots, and the one before that had just 1 or none. Is it noteworthy that the clerk decided to order 75 absentee ballots for this election? Of the 58, 11 had no appropriate signature, at least 12 had been duplicated (photocopied by the town clerk), 5 were reportedly received by mail yet had no postmark. The ballots were acknowledged to have been “commingled.”
The count of the absentee ballots was stunning. Despite Hull winning slightly more election-day votes, the story was completely different when it came to the absentee votes. Of the 58, 51 went to Kelly, 6 went to Hull, and 1 was thrown out. The final numbers reported to the Secretary of State were 169 for Kelly and 126 for Hull. Forty-three votes separating the two top voter getters.
There’s more. The computers at City Hall were reportedly hacked several days before the election. There was no testimony that this had ever happened before in this town of less than 900 souls. During the trial it was referred to as a ransomware attack, but apparently no ransom was demanded. This attack on Mt. Olive City Hall computers was put forth by the town clerk as the reason why the absentee ballot list turned into the Circuit Clerk, as required by law, was incomplete. The Circuit Clerk, Melissa Duckworth dated absentee ballots in SEMS (Statewide Election Management System) as having been received on June 2, 2025, the day before the election, despite not knowing the actual dates the ballots were received.
Something else discovered at the trial was an abundance of amnesia. At least half, if not a majority of the dozen witnesses in the first two days of the trial, had problems with their memory. “I don’t recall,” and “I’m not aware,” were heard repeatedly, despite just five months separating the election and the trial. The questions the witnesses were asked were almost exclusively pertaining to their official duties, yet so many memories were spotty.
The trial went on until nearly 7PM November 25th, and until 4PM November 26th, then the judge convened a pow-wow with the attorneys, where it was decided that they would go home for Thanksgiving weekend and meet again Monday morning, December 1st, to determine the next steps of the trial. Both sides now have until December 15th to provide Judge Pickard with any information they believe should be considered before he makes his ruling.
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