A Leflore County woman has been sentenced in a ballot harvesting case investigated and prosecuted by the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch announced Monday that Bobbie Jean Peoples, of Greenwood, was sentenced on Dec. 2 after pleading guilty to one count of transmission of a ballot mailed to another. According to investigators, Peoples knowingly collected and transmitted an absentee ballot that had been mailed to someone else in July 2023, despite not being legally authorized to handle it.
Peoples was sentenced to six months in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, with the time suspended, and issued a $2,718.75 fine.
“Free and fair elections are a pillar of our democracy,”Fitch said. “Ballot harvesting undermines trust in the fairness of our elections, and we must be vigilant to maintain the integrity of the electoral process.”
The case comes as Mississippi continues tightening election security rules. During the 2025 legislative session, Fitch worked with state Rep. Noah Sanford, R-Collins, to strengthen the state’s ballot harvesting laws. The resulting measure, House Bill 724, makes it a criminal offense to harvest an absentee ballot with the intent of preventing it from being counted. It was later signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves.