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Mississippi Early Voting Initiative (2023)
| Mississippi Early Voting Initiative | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Election date November 7, 2023 | |
| Topic Suffrage | |
| Status Not on the ballot | |
| Type Constitutional amendment | Origin Citizens |
The Mississippi Early Voting Initiative was not on the ballot in Mississippi as an indirect initiated constitutional amendment on November 7, 2023.
Measure design
The measure would have required at least 10 days of early voting including two Saturdays before every election.[1]
Path to the ballot
The state process
In Mississippi, the number of signatures required to qualify an initiated constitutional amendment for the ballot is equal to 12 percent of the total number of votes cast for governor in the last gubernatorial general election immediately preceding the signature deadline—not necessarily the gubernatorial election immediately preceding the targeted election date. Beginning with the day the sponsor receives the ballot title and summary, proponents have one year to circulate petitions and receive certification from the county circuit clerks. Petitions must be submitted to the secretary of state at least 90 days prior to the beginning of the regular session—which begins in the first week of January.
The requirements to get an initiated constitutional amendment certified for the 2023 ballot:
- Signatures: 106,190 valid signatures were required.
- Deadline: Petitions must be submitted to the secretary of state at least 90 days prior to the beginning of the state legislative session—which begins in the first week of January.
Petition sponsors must submit signatures to the appropriate county circuit clerks. There are no mandatory deadlines for this review and sponsors are recommended to coordinate with local clerks to ensure timely certification. Once the circuit clerks have certified the signatures, proponents must file the entire petition with the secretary of state. Sponsors must also pay a $500 fee upon filing.
An initiative must receive a majority of the total votes cast for that particular initiative and must also receive more than 40% of the total votes cast in that election.
Details about this initiative
- Rep. Hester Jackson-McCray (D) filed the initiative in April 2021.[2]
- The Mississippi Secretary of State cleared the petition for circulation on August 2, 2021.[3]
- The measure was filed targeting the 2022 ballot, but did not qualify for the 2022 ballot because proponents did not submit signatures by the deadline. Since signatures are valid for one year following the date that ballot language is finalized, the measure could qualify for the 2023 ballot.
- Signatures were not submitted by the one-year circulation deadline nor by the October 5, 2022, deadline, therefore the measure did not qualify for the 2023 ballot.[4]
On May 14, 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned Initiative 65, the 2020 medical marijuana initiative. The ruling stated that the initiative petition did not comply with the signature distribution requirements in the Mississippi Constitution and that it is impossible for any petition to meet the requirements and has been impossible since congressional reapportionment in 2001.
The six justices wrote, "... Whether with intent, by oversight, or for some other reason, the drafters of [the constitutional signature distribution requirement] wrote a ballot initiative process that cannot work in a world where Mississippi has fewer than five representatives in Congress. To work in today’s reality, it will need amending—something that lies beyond the power of the Supreme Court."[5]
The 1992 constitutional amendment that granted the power of citizen initiative in Mississippi required signatures to be collected evenly from all five congressional districts that existed at the time. It mandated no more than one-fifth of the required signatures could be collected from any single congressional district. During 2001 redistricting after the 2000 census, however, the number of congressional districts in the state was reduced to four.
Sponsors of some initiatives targeting the 2022 ballot in Mississippi filed a lawsuit challenging the Supreme Court's ruling.[6]
Click here for more information on the lawsuit and the ruling.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ , "Initiative 78," accessed July 24, 2021
- ↑ Mississippi Secretary of State, "Initiatives," accessed July 24, 2021
- ↑ Ballotpedia staff, "email correspondence with initiative sponsor," August 6, 2021
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedSos - ↑ Mississippi Supreme Court, "IN RE INITIATIVE MEASURE NO. 65: MAYOR MARY HAWKINS BUTLER v MICHAEL WATSON, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI," accessed May 14, 2021
- ↑ WMC Action News, "Challenge filed to Mississippi Supreme Court’s ruling on Initiative 65," accessed June 3, 2021
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