Before being struck down by the state Supreme Court, Mississippi once had a ballot initiative process that allowed a group of citizens to amend the state constitution.
There are five measures active in the Legislature that would restore the state’s ballot initiative process by addressing the question brought up when the process was defeated and that is the number of signatures per congressional district.
State Sen. David Blount is a Democrat who represents north Jackson. He has two measures, Senate Bill 2906 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 529.
State senators Chris McDaniel, R-Ellisville, and Joe Seymour, R-Vancleave, have also proposed similar legislation. In the House, state Rep. William Arnold, R-Booneville, has his own version.
Initiative 65 received 57.89 percent of the vote statewide on November 3, 2020 and it would’ve created a medical marijuana program. It went around the Legislature and would’ve added medical marijuana to the state’s constitution where lawmakers could do little to influence it.
The city of Madison and Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court contesting the constitutionality of the state’s ballot initiative law. The court later ruled in favor of the city of Madison and Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler on May 14.
The city argued successfully that the ballot initiative was unconstitutional since there are four congressional districts (there were five when the amendment was added to the state constitution) and the number of signatures submitted from at least one of the four districts exceeded the one-fifth of the total number required.
According to the original lawsuit, the state Constitution prohibits the secretary of state from considering any signatures exceeding one-fifth of the total number of signatures required and state law prohibits the secretary of state from putting an initiative on the ballot that doesn’t meet the criteria.
The court handed the process back to lawmakers and told them to fix it. There has yet to be any of the other ballot initiatives to be overturned using the same argument, such as voter identification and eminent domain.
The Legislature has proposed seven concurrent resolutions to change the ballot initiative law since 2003 and none have passed. The secretary of state’s office replaced the language of “any congressional district” to “from each of the five congressional districts as they existed in the year 2000” in 2009, a move endorsed by an attorney general's opinion that doesn’t have the force of law.
It's time now to give the people back their rights to amend their constitution. The original ballot initiative process was rigorous with a signature process that required financing and a concert effort. This rigor kept Mississippi ballots from being larded up with a stream of constant initiatives like in Oregon. This state had 168 ballot measures between 1995 and 2020, with 78 of them becoming part of the state’s constitution.
Giving this limited power allows a concerted effort by citizens to amend their constitution, especially when lawmakers wouldn’t address an issue.
