Think again should you ever yearn for voters to remove a mayor or any other elected official in Mississippi from office before election time rolls around.
The only way an elected official in Mississippi may be removed from office before a term is completed is if he or she is convicted of a felony, said Shari Veazey, executive director of the Mississippi Municipal League.
The state of Mississippi has no recall provision unlike 40 states that allow it at a local level. Of the 40, 19 allow it at the state level. The process, which varies from state to state, typically includes the circulation of petitions by recall organizers, the evaluation of signatures by election officials and a public vote provided the petitions have enough valid signatures.
For Mississippi to have a recall provision, the Legislature would have to pass a bill authorizing it.
State Sen. Walter Michel of District 25 doesn’t recall any bill being introduced in the Legislature calling for the establishment of a recall provision since his time in office which dates to 1992 when he was elected as a state representative.
State Sen. David Blount of District 29, who has been in office since 2008, doesn’t remember any efforts aimed at establishing recall in the state.
The solution for dissatisfied voters in Mississippi?
“You live with it until the next time when the ballot box is sitting there,” said Marty Wiseman, former longtime director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government and Economic Development at Mississippi State University.
“The option is to make sure someone else runs that may get more votes.”
At the suggestion of a recall election for Jackson Mayor Antar Chokwe Lumumba, which isn’t even possible, Wiseman said: “I can’t imagine given the demographics of Jackson that anybody would get enough petition signatures.”
Wiseman speculates if Mississippi had a recall provision it would probably be used frequently.
There could be some wisdom in what Wiseman has to say, considering recalls in neighboring states as shown on balletpedia.com.
The website lists 70 recalls in Louisiana from 2003 until the current year, including those for Louisiana House of Representatives members, parish school board members, parish board members and even the governor. There was a recall for John Bel Edwards, governor of Louisiana over his coronavirus response but it did not gain enough signatures for an election.
Fifty-one recalls in Georgia between 2005 and the current year are listed on balletpedia.com. Several mayors and city councils, a board of education and a community improvement district were targeted for recall.
Tennessee has seen 14 recalls between 2009 and the current year, including one against Nashville Mayor John Cooper and council members that was initiated in October 2020 but did not gain the needed signatures to make it on the ballot. The petition said officials failed to make budget cuts, unnecessarily keeping schools closed and targeting businesses with COVID-19 restrictions.
Alabama has just one recall listed on balletpedia.com.
From Jan. 1 through June 22, Ballotpedia covered 152 recall efforts against 240 officials nationwide compared to 165 recall efforts against 263 officials by midyear 2021.
Of those 240 officials targeted for recall so far this year, 20 officials were removed from office after a recall election, nine resigned after recall efforts started and 16 were put on the ballot but defeated the recall effort, according to Ballotpedia. One hundred ten officials failed to make the ballot and recall elections for another three officials have been scheduled but not held as of the report’s publication. Eighty-five officials face recall efforts that have not made the ballet yet, according to ballotpedia.com.
