The House on Thursday will likely let a proposal that would restore voters’ right to sidestep the Legislature and put measures on a statewide ballot die without a vote.
House Constitution Chairman Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall, told Mississippi Today that he would let the measure die by Thursday’s legislative deadline because he believed the Senate would not be receptive to any ballot initiative proposal.
“They’re not taking it up on that end of the building, so there’s no sense in us fighting about it down here,” Wallace said of the Senate.
This would be the fourth straight year that lawmakers at the Capitol have been unable to agree on restoring the ballot initiative after the state Supreme Court in 2021 ruled the state’s initiative was unworkable because of the signature-gathering process.
Despite the Mississippi Constitution explicitly stating that voters still have a right to offer amendments through an initiative process, citizens have no process to change state laws or the state Constitution.
Since the court’s ruling that the initiative process was invalidated, some lawmakers have questioned whether Mississippi needs an initiative and raised concerns that uber-wealthy out-of-state donors can use their wealth to manipulate voters through a ballot initiative.
During the 30 years that the state had an initiative, only seven proposals made it to a statewide ballot: two initiatives for term limits, eminent domain, voter ID, a personhood amendment, medical marijuana and a measure forcing lawmakers to fund public education fully.
Of those seven, only eminent domain, voter ID and medical marijuana were approved by voters. The rest were rejected.
The post Mississippi ballot initiative measure set to die for fourth straight year appeared first on Mississippi Today.