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Mississippi's ballot initiative process remains dead after GOP legislature fails to revive it [1]

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Date: 2023-04-05  

The state’s highest court, as we wrote two years ago, decreed that the rules adopted in the 1990s requiring organizers to gather signatures from each of the state's five congressional districts in order to qualify for the ballot had become impossible to comply with because the state lost a congressional district in the 2000 round of reapportionment. This decision not only made it impossible for any future ballot measures to qualify under the current rules, it also invalidated a 2020 initiative that voters had passed to legalize medical marijuana.

This year the state House began advancing a proposal to restore the initiative process, but only in a very limited way. While voters previously had the power to collect signatures to place proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot, the legislature would still retain that power for itself. Mississippi’s denizens would have the ability to initiate ballot measures to create or amend state laws―but not for any proposals to weaken the state’s near-total ban on abortion. However, the legislature would have had the power to alter, or even repeal, anything approved by voters.

None of this ended up mattering, though, because while the House and Senate seemed to agree that they wanted a weak initiative process in place, they failed to reach a consensus over the number of signatures required to place something on the ballot: The upper chamber wanted 240,000, which is the equivalent of 12% of the state’s registered voters, while the House wanted to restore the 106,000 minimum that previously existed. House Speaker Philip Gunn said that, while the Senate suggested 150,000 as a late counter-offer, it wasn’t good enough with almost no time left to act before the session ended and other priorities needed to be addressed.

Mississippi Today notes that this debacle could have an impact on this August’s GOP primary for lieutenant governor between incumbent Delbert Hosemann, who runs the upper chamber, and far-right state Sen. Chris McDaniel. While Hosemann temporarily kept the Senate’s bill alive after it stalled in Polk’s committee, McDaniel and other critics blame him for sending it there in the first place knowing full well the chairman was ardently opposed to it. “Delbert Hosemann chose yet again to silence the voices of Mississippians and protect his own power by obstructing our ballot initiative process,” declared McDaniel, adding, “Delbert’s actions are both disgraceful and unconstitutional.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/5/2162252/-Mississippi-s-ballot-initiative-process-remains-dead-after-GOP-legislature-fails-to-revive-it

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