It’s been half a decade since Mississippians have been able to propose new laws or constitutional amendments directly on the ballot for a vote on election day. One state lawmaker, however, says he is on a mission to change that.
State Sen. Jeremy England, who heads the Elections Committee in his chamber, is vowing to push his colleagues to restore the ballot initiative process. The Republican from Vancleave has long maintained that the people of Mississippi not only want their quasi-legislative voice back, but that it’s also something they’re entitled to have.
“People want this back. It’s guaranteed to them in the Constitution, so we need to do that,” England said Wednesday on Mornings with Richard Cross.
The ballot initiative process was stripped by the Mississippi Supreme Court in 2021 over challenges to signature-gathering requirements and a change to the state’s congressional districts. Since then, efforts to give citizens the right to circumvent the legislature in making new laws have proven fruitless.
A series of debates over what citizens should or should not be able to put on the ballot, signature requirements for a measure to be featured on an election day, and the percentage of votes needed for a measure to be approved have resulted in multiple impasses within the state capitol.
This year, England is promoting legislation that would require 10% of active registered voters in Mississippi, or around 170,000 people, to sign a petition to bring a measure to a statewide vote. The bill would require that no more than one-third, or just over 56,000, of signatures gathered could come from a single congressional district. England said those signature requirements were decided in one effort to keep the process honest and even.
“This is a higher number, but not impossible. It’s something that people can get now with social media outreach and the way that we move about doing things,” he explained. “It’s attainable but difficult as it should be.”
Another restriction England floated is that a ballot initiative measure could not deprive another citizen of “his or her right to life, liberty, or the pursuit of property.” In the past, lawmakers have attempted to implement much stricter guidelines that would prohibit any measure from including abortion, the public employees’ retirement system, or changes to the state constitution. England did not clarify whether any specific caveats such of those would be included in the bill.
“One thing I’ve learned since I’ve been here is that Mississippians have something, and it gets taken away from them, they want it back. They’re right to do so. This is a constitutional guarantee to them,” England said. “We need to work on it. We need to look at it and figure out how to give that back to the people so that they can petition and implement things that the legislature is either dragging our feet on or not looking at.”
The proposal, if given the green light by his colleagues and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, would include a statute that the legislature could not tweak or remove the process within the first two year of implementation, England said. He added that it would not change the current state constitution, where the ballot initiative is currently protected but with outdated text.