The Mississippi House of Representatives plans to take up ballot-initiative reform as early as next week, but whether it will pass both chambers is still up in the air, according to several lawmakers.
While no bill had been filed as of Friday afternoon, House Speaker Jason White said during that morning’s session he plans to hand a ballot-initiative bill to the Constitution Committee next week.
“Though we might be doing other things as well, I think (Constitution Committee Chair Price Wallace) wants to move that fairly quickly,” White, a Republican, told the House.
Wallace and fellow Republican Rep. Fred Shanks, representing Rankin County, told the Clarion Ledger they are planning to submit a bill Monday that will bring the ballot initiative in line with Mississippi’s four congressional districts, as well as limit what laws the state voting body can change.
If all goes to plan, Wallace said the House could vote on it as soon as Friday.
“I feel that we can get this passed and get it on down there to the Senate,” Wallace said. “Hopefully the Senate will take it up, get it passed and we can get this ballot initiative behind us. We’ve been trying to do this for years now.”
In 2000, the number of congressional districts in Mississippi went from five to four, but the ballot initiative process, which provides voters the chance to change laws during general elections by first polling signatures from those five districts, was never changed, according to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website.
However, this was not an expressed issue until after 2020, when voters passed Initiative 65, a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana.
That vote sparked a challenge led by long time Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins-Butler, who sought to challenge the initiative and its entire process in court. The law, they argued, was outdated because it required signatures to come in equal proportion from the state’s “five” congressional districts.
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In May 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled on Butler’s side, putting the state’s medical marijuana ambitions in what would ultimately be a temporary pause, but the ballot initiative process into a more lasting limbo.
What do legislators think of ballot-initiative reform now?
Since 2021, the House and the Senate have both passed ballot initiative reform with the intent to change the number of necessary congressional districts, the numbers of signatures required to call a vote and whether they could amend the constitution, among other things. However, those bills all died in committee once reaching the other side of the legislature.
Wallace said those facts were taken into serious consideration as he and other committee members drafted the current bill.
“We have looked at some of the previous bills that have been passed by the House, and I used some of the information from them to try and draft a bill that will take care of the ballot initiative for the citizens of the state,” Wallace said.
Sen. David Blount, a Democrat representing Hinds County, told the Clarion Ledger he also plans to file a bill to Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann as early as next week that will focus only on redistricting the ballot initiative process.
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“I had filed legislation the past two years to restore that right to the people, and I’ll be following it again this year,” Blount said. “I’ll hope to talk to the chairman (of the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee) about how we can give people their right to initiative process.”
Hosemann thinks measure can pass, but …
Hosemann said during a luncheon earlier this month that he believes ballot initiative can pass both chambers, but he thinks it will come down to the number of signatures required to bring a ballot to voters.
“Everybody agrees it shouldn’t be constitutional, it’s too hard to deal with,” Hosemann said. “The last one (the Senate) passed, I think was about 160,000 signatures, and the house was about 80,000. So, we were in agreement about the constitutionality part of it. So we’re just arguing about how many signatures would be required.”
Currently, for an initiative to be placed on the ballot, state law stated a minimum of 107,216 certified signatures must be gathered, with at least 21,444 certified signatures from each of the “five” congressional districts.
Both Rep. Rob Roberson, R, and Sen. Hob Bryan, D, said they would support reinstating the ballot initiative if voters could not change or add laws to the state constitution.
“I think it would be a very bad idea to have an initiative for a constitutional amendment,” Bryan said.
Sen. David Parker, R, who chairs the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee, which has in the past killed ballot initiative bills sent over from senators and the House, said he is open to reform.
However, Parker also believes the process should limit who can start the ballot initiative process.
“One of my big strong feelings is that people from Mississippi should be making decisions about what we do in Mississippi, not from other areas of the country,” he said. “And not just that, I want transparency for what people are signing. There have been initiatives in the past that I’ve seen where something was proposed to someone, some way just to get a signature.”
Rep. Chris Bell, D, who serves Hinds County and leads the House’s Black Caucus, said Parker’s suggestion goes beyond what he would be willing to vote for.
“A simple ballot initiative for us would have been to just change it from five to four districts and leave it as it is, and we move on, that’s the simplest thing to do,” Bell said. “I call Parker’s suggestion bull [explicative]. At the end of the day, a ballot initiative is a ballot initiative. And regardless of who comes to where, it’s a part of the process.”
Grant McLaughlin covers state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: MS lawmakers plan to take up ballot initiative reform next week
