Cynthia Walker said she was 15 years old when she participated in her first ballot box review — reconciling the number of ballots with poll book entries and taking a count of everything, down to the number of rubber bands in each box.

She claimed her findings, recorded in handwritten notes on a yellow legal pad, led to a landmark election challenge for a Black supervisor 50 miles north of Jackson. The 67-year-old Yazoo City resident said she’s taken part in dozens of these examinations since then.

So when Walker saw former Hinds County Supervisor David Archie in the news in the summer of 2023, incredulous that he’d lost reelection in a smackdown by a political newcomer, she thought to herself, “I know what happened to him,” Walker told Mississippi Today. “I’m going to reach out to him.”

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