Thirty-one years ago in November an overwhelming 70% of voters approved a ballot initiative process for Mississippi. Two years ago the Mississippi Supreme Court threw out the process over a wording snafu. Despite state leaders’ calls for the process to be reinstated, that has not happened. So, another November general election will pass with citizens denied their right to alter their constitution.
Soon after the court decision, Gov. Tate Reeves, Speaker Philip Gunn, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said the initiative should be reinstated. “Getting it fixed sooner rather than later is where we as the legislature should be,” said Gunn in May 2021.
Two years later Lt. Gov Hosemann said, “I was for the ballot initiative and I didn’t get it,” when he and Gunn could not agree on the details of a revised initiative process in the 2023 legislative session.
Hmmm.
In 2021 the thought was to fix the language and reinstate the process. By 2023, leaders’ thoughts had shifted significantly.
My take is that the Governor, Lt. Governor, and Speaker got scared of the initiative process, particularly the latter two. Enjoying immense power over legislation and public policy, they feared citizen initiatives would diminish that power.
The proposed revision would not allow amendments to the constitution, but only changes to state laws. An initiative approved under the original process could only be altered by a future constitutional amendment, giving citizens awesome power. Under the revision an approved initiative would only take a regular bill in a future Legislature to make changes, vastly limiting citizens’ power.
The constitution gives citizens “the inherent, sole, and exclusive right … to alter and abolish their constitution and form of government whenever they deem it necessary to their safety and happiness.” The Legislature is supposed to provide the method.
The ballot initiative process approved in 1992 was a very conservative method. The Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University published an initiative handbook in 1995 that said the state’s process was “one of the most difficult processes for amending a state constitution through citizen initiative found anywhere in the country.”
Apparently, such a cumbersome process could not allay state leaders’ fears. Thus, the skullduggery that crafted the dramatic changes proposed in the revised process.
At one point, pundits believed reinstituting the ballot initiative process would be a hot issue in this year’s elections. Not so much. Yet, polls continue to show a large majority of Mississippians favor having an initiative process to amend their constitution.
“It is far better not to say you’ll do something than to say you will and then not do it” – Ecclesiastes 5:5.
Bill Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.
