OurTupelo

Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share their ideas about our state’s past, present and future. Opinions expressed in guest essays are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of Mississippi Today. You can read more about the section here.

Mississippi United is celebrating its first six months of helping Mississippians get informed and take action to move our state forward.

Our efforts are:

• Making it easier for folks to raise their voices about issues and policies that matter.
• Encouraging citizens to be a thorn in the sides of politicians who don’t care what we have to say.
• Helping people do the hard work of living in a democracy.

I launched Mississippi United after working as an amateur activist and organizer because it became so clear to me that Mississippians are hungry for an avenue to actually DO SOMETHING to make things better in this beautiful and complicated place.

The fortunate among us could be anywhere else. But we’re here because it’s home. It’s where our roots are. We love the food and the music and the sports and our church and the hunting and fishing and the literature and the local theater. We love the short lines at the cash register and the red lights.  We love the fresh air, the eye contact and smiles from complete strangers.

And whether we could be someplace else or not, so many of us are certain things could be better in Mississippi, and we’re willing to fight for it.

Mississippi could be a place where good health care is readily available, whether you’re in Belhaven or Mound Bayou. Where, if you’re expecting a child, you know there is medical personnel within reach to care for you and your newborn. Where you rest easy because you know your kids are getting an education at the local public school that will prepare them for a future better than anything you could have imagined at their age. Where dependable and affordable child-care incentivize you to work and support your family.  Where law enforcement is there to serve and protect all Mississippians and not just some, and all Mississippians actually believe it.  Where the median household income is well above the current $55,000 per year and is sufficient that folks can sleep at night knowing there’s enough by the end of the month to keep the lights on, the refrigerator stocked, the prescriptions bought, the car note paid and maybe even a little to sock away for the future.

Mississippi could be a place where lawmakers actively encourage all of us to get out and vote and do everything in their power to make sure our voices are heard at the ballot box and not drowned out due to partisan gerrymandering.

Mississippi could be a place where proponents of economic development understand there’s no better investment than in our health care and our education.

And Mississippi doesn’t have to sell itself out to giant tech companies for billion dollar AI “developments” that will ultimately offer little in the way of jobs for our people and will most likely bring noise and air pollution, natural resource depletion and rising utility costs for consumers. No, Mississippi could be a place where its leaders recognize the desperation of those companies to find land and power like we have in abundance here and demand they invest in us and our people in ways that help more Mississippians thrive.

I’m no expert on AI data centers, but there are plenty of communities all over the country that have become the experts by learning the hard way.  And our state leaders would be foolish to ignore the lessons learned from those experiences.

Mississippi could be a place where our lawmakers don’t talk out of both sides of their mouth. In one breath preaching peace through strength and in the next voting “nay” on the war powers resolution that would perhaps begin to end the most ill-conceived and unsupported war we’ve ever started.

In one breath saying we don’t have the money to begin to solve the issues facing our poorest public schools and in the next breath voting “yay” on HB 1944, which will use tax credits to give up to $20 million of our state taxes every year to private schools for literally anything, regardless of whether it helps educate a single student. 

In one breath saying we should expand Medicaid but only if it includes “work requirements” and in the next breath (or a breath two years later) saying the nearly identical version of Medicaid expansion passed under the federal “Big Beautiful Bill,” including the work requirement, is too expensive for Mississippi. In reality the federal return on the state’s investment in any version of Medicaid expansion is just too good to pass up.

In one breath saying undocumented immigrants are costing taxpayers too much money and in the next breath supporting detention of nonviolent immigrants at a cost to taxpayers of $152 per day and the loss of all the tax dollars working immigrants pay, when even the Cato Institute reports that immigrants have reduced our nation’s deficit by $14.5 trillion over the past 30 years.   

Mississippi could be a place where our U.S. senators and their staff don’t criticize and literally run from constituents who dare to show up with facts from the Congressional Budget Office about the financial hit we’re all taking thanks to the “Big Beautiful Bill” and tariffs.

Our state could be all of these things, but only if we Mississippians demand it. Problem is, the work of demanding it is hard. And life is already hard enough for a lot of folks, no matter where you sit in relation to that $55,000 median income.

There are carpools to run and meals to cook and groceries to buy and jobs to work and broken appliances to fix and bills to pay and homework to help with and plumbers to call and doctor’s appointments to schedule and lost shoes to find and deadlines to meet and pets to feed and what the heck is Medicaid really anyway and why does it matter to me since I have private health insurance and what’s the truth about this war in Iran? And I read something the other day about data centers, but I don’t really get it and is ICE really in Mississippi and are they actually deporting folks? Just the really bad criminals, right?

My hope for Mississippi United is to make it easier on all of us to be a voice for positive change. We want to make it easier to understand how different policies impact life at home and for our neighbors. We want to simplify the often intimidating process of learning about an issue and then raising our voices about it to policymakers. We want to make sure our elected officials know that we are paying attention and we have both the courage and the knowledge required to speak up on the things that matter to us.

To accomplish these goals, Mississippi United prepares letters to lawmakers about different issues and enables anyone to review the letter and sign on with little more than a couple mouse clicks.

 We share tips on legislation and who to call to voice your opposition or support. We publicize a calendar of statewide events Mississippians eager for positive change may want to attend. We keep a resource library for folks to learn more about the policies we discuss in our calls to action.

Our most recent featured letter concerns the war in Iran and is addressed to U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker.  We demands a congressional investigation and public hearings in the Senate Armed Forces Committee that he chair.

Several of us, including four U.S. military veterans, recently hand-delivered that letter and the signatures of 620 Mississippians, to Sen. Wicker’s Jackson office.  

We explained to the senator’s staffers that Mississippians are eager to understand why the U.S. launched a war without congressional approval, what the goals and strategies and endgame are for this war, what the human and financial costs will be and what benefit will come to Americans as a result. We would like to know how this war will impact global trade and oil prices and our own pocketbooks, and how this war will affect our relationships with whatever remaining allies we have and how it will embolden China, Russia and North Korea.

Mississippi United is here to help people ask those questions and demand answers from the folks who work for us in Washington.  We did just that by delivering the letter to Sen. Wicker’s staff.

Imagine our shock when the senator’s staffer told us, in no uncertain terms, that the senator “has no power” over President Trump’s war in Iran.  Two of the veterans with us – one a 1st lieutenant infantry, combat platoon leader for the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and the other an Air Force sergeant, avionics specialist on F-4 Phantoms, were so disgusted they had to turn around and walk out of the senator’s office before the visit concluded. Six of us remained in the office — two retired government lawyers, two retired private practice lawyers, a retired CPA and U.S. Army veteran, and another retired veteran. 

We insisted that the senator had the power to vote in favor of the war powers resolution, but he voted “nay” instead.  We explained that the very reason for our letter was that the senator has the power to launch an investigation and hold congressional hearings about this war.  And he has the power to speak out against the war and the power to vote against additional funding for the war.  The staffer said she would relay our messages to the senator.

The issues we help Mississippians tackle vary from week to week. So far, we’ve taken up the financial and emotional cost of immigrant detentions and deportations, the tactics used by ICE, the extension of Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, First Amendment protections, the Epstein files, impeachment of various administration officials, the financial hit to Mississippians from the “Big Beautiful Bill” and tariffs, school choice, ballot initiatives, infant mortality, voter suppression, and 287(g) agreements, and now the war in Iran, among other issues.

What’s particularly unique about this work is that we understand that we don’t all have to agree on all the same things in order to move the needle. There are likely far more Mississippians passionately opposed to the war in Iran than those who care one way or another about ACA tax credits. And that’s fine.

When folks see a letter or a call to action from us that speaks to them, they can sign on to the letter and make the calls if they want. And if it’s something they don’t agree with or don’t care about, they can sit that one out. Easy breezy.    

All told, Mississippi United has helped 1,286 Mississippians make nearly 108,000 written contacts with approximately 250 local, state and federal officials in just six months. 

When you combine that with all the work folks are doing on their own – calling lawmakers, showing up for protests, writing letters to the editor, emailing their representatives, attending legislative hearings, visiting with legislators – we’re certain that Mississippians are moving the needle in a positive direction.

Kathleen O’Beirne is a native Mississippian, a recovering lawyer, and an eternal optimist convinced that Mississippi can get off the bottom of all the good lists and the top of all the bad lists, if we really want to.  She studied political science and Spanish at Davidson College and obtained her J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law. O’Beirne says the very best part about her work as an activist and as the founder of Mississippi United is getting to know the fabulous Mississippians throughout the state who work hard every day to make things better.  Anyone interested in learning more about Mississippi United can visit www.mississippiunited.online.  

Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday said he would consider calling a special session on school choice and a teacher pay increase if legislators can’t come to an agreement over the next four weeks. 

Republican House and Senate leaders have bickered over raising teacher pay and expanding school choice — policies that often allocate state funds to families to pay for private schooling — since the start of the legislative session in January.

Despite the discord, Reeves told reporters at a press conference Tuesday that both issues remain a priority for the Republican governor. 

In fact, he said the two issues should be “tied together.” 

“We should give teachers a pay raise, and we should also give parents and kids more options to give every child in our state an opportunity for success,” Reeves said. 

But that’s a strategy House Speaker Jason White, who has led the school choice charge at the Capitol, has publicly opposed.

“No one in the legislature is tying school choice policy to a teacher pay raise,” White wrote on social media in December. 

A major issue for a special session is the fact that school choice expansion failed in the Senate and barely passed the House. Even with White deeming it his No. 1 issue, many of his GOP caucus members voted against his school choice bill and it’s unclear whether he could keep a majority vote together even in a special session.

Reeves has never called a special session, which would suspend legislative deadlines and put more pressure on lawmakers, over a policy issue. He has only called lawmakers into a special session to deal with economic development projects and to pass a budget when legislators last year failed to agree on one.

However, he hinted that could change if lawmakers don’t reach a compromise on school choice soon, in part because of his lame-duck status.

“I don’t have much time left,” said Reeves, who is in the penultimate year of his second four-year term as governor. “And so on items that are incredibly important to me like rewarding our teachers, like getting more options for our kids — those are the kind of things that I am very, very interested in the Legislature getting across the finish line.”

Reeves said that it would be premature to make a decision yet, given the mercurial nature of the session. Just last week, the House revived a teacher pay raise bill, after House and Senate measures died. 

“Nothing is dead in the Capitol until it is dead, dead, dead,” Reeves said. “We’re continuing to have good conversations with members from the House and the Senate, and we will continue to do so.”

A bill that would tie union organizing restrictions to economic development incentives is headed to Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk for final approval. 

Senate Bill 2202, which passed the House last week, would require that businesses that receive economic development grants from the state agree to labor organizing stipulations. 

The legislation would ban employers from recognizing unions solely by a card check, or majority sign-up, and require a secret ballot election. It would ban agreements that prohibit employers from campaigning against unions during organizing and ban companies from giving unions employee contact information without written consent. 

House Business and Commerce Committee Chairman Lee Yancey, a Republican from Brandon, said the bill is intended to attract businesses to Mississippi by ensuring them the “flexibility to run their companies.”

“This is us having a say in what we spend our dollars on and what kind of activities it promotes,” he said. 

However, Rep. Oscar Denton, a Democrat from Vicksburg and longtime union member, was concerned the bill would discourage companies from coming to Mississippi. 

“We must ask whether it is appropriate for the state of Mississippi to condition economic incentives on how employees exercise federally protected rights,” Denton said. “Economic development should be about jobs, infrastructure and opportunity – not about limiting how workers organize themselves together.”

By requiring a private ballot, employers who receive these state grants would no longer be able to voluntarily recognize unions based on signed authorization cards alone.

Additionally, the bill could make labor organizing more challenging by prohibiting employers from giving employee contact information to organizers without approval and banning neutrality agreements between employers and unions. Under these agreements, employers vow not to advocate for or against worker organizing during a union campaign.

Yancey said that it was reasonable to impose such measures on companies receiving state dollars, while Denton argued the bill would also skew organizing campaigns in favor of management. 

“We can be in a race … but if you’re on pavement and I’m in quicksand, you already got the advantage,” Denton said. “The distance is the same, but the conditions are different.”

Mississippi has long been a right-to-work state, meaning workers cannot be forced to join a union or pay dues. Employers may fire workers at any time for almost any reason. About 5% of working Mississippians are union members, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

If Reeves signs the bill, Mississippi would become the first state in the country to ban neutrality agreements and the fourth state to require private ballots, according to Workers for Opportunity, a national group that advocates for employee rights against unions.

Mississippi voters are choosing Democratic and Republican nominees for Congress on Tuesday, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Check here with Mississippi Today after polls close for live results provided by The Associated Press.

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and its incumbent junior U.S. senator are running for reelection in 2026. Party nominees chosen Tuesday will compete in the general election on Nov. 3. 

US Senate

US House District 1

US House District 2

US House District 3

US House District 4

GREENVILLE — A jury has acquitted a former engineer of charges of making false statements and obstructing justice during the criminal investigation of a 2017 military plane crash in Mississippi that killed all 16 service members aboard.

James Michael Fisher was found not guilty Thursday after an eight-day trial in federal court in Greenville.

Fisher had been the lead propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Warner Robins, Georgia, in 2011. That’s when military investigators said civilian maintenance personnel failed to find defects in a cracked and corroded propeller blade that was installed on a KC-130T transport plane. Investigators said that propeller blade broke apart while the New York-based plane was in flight from Cherry Point, North Carolina, to El Centro, California, on July 10, 2017.

Fifteen Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed when the propeller blade slammed into the aircraft body, causing a shock that broke the plane into pieces in the sky and sent the wreckage plummeting into soybean fields near Itta Bena, Mississippi.

A federal grand jury in Mississippi indicted Fisher in 2024, who by then had retired. The indictment accused Fisher of lying to federal agents about changes to inspection procedures during a 2021 investigation, suggesting he was part of a cover-up that shifted blame to maintenance technicians.

Steve Farese, Fisher’s defense lawyer, said someone else cleared technicians to change how propellers were inspected while Fisher was in Brazil, and thus Fisher didn’t lie when he told investigators no documents allowing maintenance changes had been signed in 2011. Farese also said the propeller in question was worked on days before the form was signed, arguing the document allowing the change played no role in the crash.

“Nobody did it intentionally,” Farese told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. “As one witness said, there were 10 different ways for that blade to have through inspection and be missed or put back in the system accidentally. There were 10 different ways it could have happened. So there was no clarity in the trial as to exactly what did happen.”

Prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment Monday. The indictment alleged that engineers at the Georgia base approved about 30 changes to propeller inspection procedures from 2008 to 2017, despite Fisher earlier not producing documents, and that investigators concluded “they could no longer trust Fisher.”

The plane was based at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, and it was taking Marine special operations forces from North Carolina to Arizona for training. The crash was the deadliest Marine Corps air disaster since 2005, when a transport helicopter went down during a sandstorm in Iraq, killing 30 Marines and a sailor.

In the 2017 crash, six of the Marines and the sailor were from an elite Marine Raider battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and were headed for pre-deployment training in Yuma, Arizona, the Marine Corps said Tuesday. The remaining nine Marines had been based in New York,

The debris spread across two to three miles of farmland near the Mississippi Delta town of Itta Bena, about 85 miles north of Jackson. Families gathered near the site a year later to dedicate a memorial to Yanky 72, the plane’s call sign.

After the crash, the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force grounded some or all of their C-130s for a time, including examining and replacing propeller blades.

Mississippi voters will choose Democratic and Republican nominees for Congress on Tuesday.   

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. representatives and its incumbent junior U.S. senator are running for reelection in 2026. Party nominees chosen Tuesday will compete in the general election on Nov. 3. 

Republicans hold slight majorities in both chambers of Congress. Mississippi’s congressional delegation currently consists of five Republicans and one Democrat. The only member of the delegation not on the ballot Tuesday is Sen. Roger Wicker, who isn’t up for re-election until 2030.

Here is a breakdown of the candidates in each primary.

U.S. Senate

Democratic Primary: Scott Colom, the district attorney for Noxubee, Clay, Lowndes and Oktibbeha counties, is competing against Marine Corps veteran Albert Littell and Priscilla Williams-Till, a distant cousin of lynching victim Emmett Till. 

Republican Primary: Incumbent Republican Hyde-Smith is competing against physician Sarah Adlakha in the GOP primary. 

Hyde-Smith has the power of incumbency, existing campaign infrastructure and the endorsement of President Donald Trump. But national Democrats believe the junior U.S. senator is vulnerable and have said they’re willing to pour money into the state to try to flip a Senate seat blue in Mississippi. 

U.S. House District 1 

Democratic Primary: Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law school professor, is running against former Marshall County state Rep. Kelvin Buck.

Republican Primary: Incumbent Trent Kelly is running unopposed in the Republican primary 

U.S. House District 2 

Democratic Primary: Incumbent Bennie Thompson is running against Evan Turnage, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senate Conference Vice Chair Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Thompson is also attempting to stave off a challenge from Pertis Williams III, who has focused on agricultural issues. 

Thompson has represented the 2nd Congressional District, which covers Jackson and the Delta, since 1993. Thompson, a civil rights leader and former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol attack, is a towering figure in state and national politics. 

Republican Primary: Adams County Supervisor Kevin Wilson is squaring off against Ron Eller, a physician’s assistant and military veteran who is running again for the GOP nomination after losing to Thompson by nearly 25 points in 2024. 

U.S. House District 3 

Democratic Primary: Michael Chiaradio, a former baseball player turned regenerative farmer from New Jersey, is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Chiaradio told Mississippi Today he believes a localized message built around economic frustration can unite both disaffected conservatives and a fractured Democratic Party.

Republican Primary: Incumbent Michael Guest is running unopposed for the Republican nomination. Guest has sailed to general election victories three times since he was first elected in 2018. In 2024, he survived a primary challenge from the right that went to a runoff but ran unopposed in the general election.

U.S. House District 4 

Democratic Primary: Three candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination. They are Jeffrey Hulum III, a state representative from Gulfport, D. Ryan Grover, a business consultant who was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 2023 and Paul Blackman, a Navy veteran.

Republican Primary: Incumbent Republican Mike Ezell, first elected in 2022, is running against Sawyer Walters, who works for the Department of Marine Resources and serves as a lieutenant in the Mississippi Army National Guard.

When Pastor Frank Hall was a little boy in Greenville during the Civil Rights Movement, organizers refused to stop meeting at his neighborhood church, even as white supremacists attacked Black churches throughout the South. They showed him voting was a right you had to fight for.

Now, decades later, when Hall discovered that the Washington County Election Commission had moved over 2,000 voters to inactive status ahead of this year’s congressional primaries Tuesday without advance notice, he knew what he had to do: fight. 

“We are facing a critical moment with the Voter Roll,” a flyer from the election commission warned voters. “We are asking you to act now before Election Day.”

Those voters in Washington County were among the 50,000 registered voters who were made inactive in Mississippi due to address conflicts after Secretary of State Michael Watson rolled out a controversial method statewide last July as another way to perform the routine job of checking voters’ residences: using unverified credit data, according to a Mississippi Today analysis of voter records from Watson’s office.

Using the credit data, which comes from the consumer-reporting giant Experian, marks a departure from the verified government data that Mississippi and most other states have historically relied on to find out when voters move. But even among the few counties and states that have experimented with this new, commercial approach, Mississippi is an outlier: 

• Unverified data: Mississippi’s system lacks key safeguards to ensure voters aren’t mistakenly flagged as inactive because of inaccurate data. Under state law, county election commissioners make voters inactive without first asking them to verify their addresses. Because Experian also doesn’t verify the credit data handed down by the secretary of state, election commissioners may mark voters inactive based on information that was never verified at any point. 
• Reports of wrongful inactivations: Mistakes in the data may have led to mistakes in real life. Some Mississippi voters may have been put on the inactive list even though they still live at the same address, according to reports from affected voters who dialed in to the election-protection hotline run by the Jackson-based nonprofit One Voice. If they don’t vote in the next two general elections, they could be purged from the list altogether under state law.
• Little notice: Under state law, voters receive little notice that they’ve been made inactive beyond a single mailed card. Because of this, county election officials and voting-rights advocates worry that voters who were wrongly made inactive might not even know until they try to cast a ballot.

Washington County already had some of the lowest rates of registered voters in the state. Now, the number of inactive voters has nearly doubled to one in six people on the list of registered voters, according to statewide data from the secretary of state.

Across the state, the data shows that Wilkinson County has the highest rate of inactive voters, at 1 in 5 people on the lists.

Hall wasn’t made inactive, but he said the prospect would be unthinkable.

“I feel like my rights are being violated,” said Hall, who’s been spreading awareness of the surge, from his congregation to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. “If you take me off the (active) voting roll, you just took away what my foreparents fought for for years to try to get us this right.”

An unverified system

When Watson unveiled his office’s “partnership” with Experian, he wrote that it would preserve “election integrity” and “bring a new level of reliable data” for voter-roll maintenance. Watson, a Republican who serves as the state’s chief election officer, has touted both as key accomplishments of his time as secretary of state while he looks to run for a new elected office.

“We have really gotten to the point where we feel like we’ve done our duty, we’ve done our work at the secretary of state’s office,” Watson said at a forum last week. “I can walk out of there and feel like I’ve left the place better than I found it.”

But in a series of press releases announcing the partnership with Experian, the secretary of state’s office largely stayed quiet on how it ensured the information was reliable.

“It makes me really nervous,” Washington County Election Commissioner Jacqueline Thompson said. “That person could be removed, that person could if you don’t do your due diligence.”

The secretary of state’s office declined an on-the-record interview and did not respond to repeated requests for comment about how it checked the reliability of the credit data and fulfilled its legal responsibility to train election officials to use the new information in time for publication.

“The Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office does not have direct oversight of county election commissioners,” the office wrote in an emailed statement. “However, in any aspect regarding voter roll maintenance, we encourage local election officials to review all relevant information before making a decision on a voter’s status.”

But some election commissioners and voting-rights advocates worry that the new data has too many flaws, further limiting voting access in a state where voter turnout sank to its lowest level in 20 years in the last presidential election.

“We’re already in a state where we don’t have that many provisions that help us access the ballot box,” said Nsombi Lambright, executive director of One Voice. “In the end, we continue to put these measures in place that make it harder rather than make it easier. It’s just embarrassing.”

Mississippi election officials turn to data for debt collectors

When the secretary of state rolled out Experian’s credit data statewide in July, Mississippi emerged as one of the first states to turn to a tool traditionally used by debt collectors to track down hard-to-find consumers.

Voter-roll maintenance is a routine process done every year. A county’s list of registered voters can change constantly as people die or move away. 

At least four times a year, election commissioners are supposed to meet and consult state and national data sources on addresses and deaths to track down those changes and ensure that their county’s list of registered voters is accurate.

If the data indicates that a voter on the list has appeared to move from their registered home address, the election commissioners must flag the voter as inactive under state law.

Like most states, Mississippi has for years relied on official data from the U.S. Postal Service to track when voters move. But that system can only flag moves when people formally submit a paid notice to the Postal Service that they’ve relocated — something many never do.

To stay more up to date on voters’ moves, Mississippi and a handful of other jurisdictions, ranging from Orange County in California to states including Louisiana, Arkansas and West Virginia, have turned to what Experian calls its “most powerful locating product”: a massive credit database called TrueTrace.

Experian’s data links possible addresses to over 245 million consumers based on their spending activity on items like loans, rent payments and credit files. For most people, the database pulls a handful of suggested addresses based on their consumer activity. From these, Experian zeroes in on a single “Best Address,” which the company states is the place “where the consumer is most likely to be reached” — but not necessarily the person’s actual home address.

“Often, this will match their residence; however, we don’t verify residency,” the company wrote to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency responsible for assisting state and local election officials.

Experian declined a request for a interview.

“While Experian’s data and insights can assist with voter list maintenance efforts, all decisions related to voter registration policies, procedures and record updates are made solely by election officials in accordance with local, state and federal laws,” the company wrote in an emailed statement.

Jacqueline Thompson saw the new system in action when she attended a training session on voter-roll maintenance after the secretary of state rolled out Experian’s data. The system unexpectedly loaded a jumble of possible addresses linked to registered voters on the rolls.

“It just pulled up all these random addresses, and so a lot of people were asking the question about that,” Jacqueline Thompson said. “Then that’s when we were told that Experian is one of the tools that the SOS (Secretary of State) is using in elections to verify whether a person is local or not.

“But you have to be very careful with that.”

Not so careful

Even among the few jurisdictions that have rolled out credit data to maintain the voter lists, Mississippi’s approach goes further than many others — opening up the opportunity for election commissioners to mark voters inactive based on data that was never verified at any point.

Under this approach, One Voice received reports that Mississippi voters who work or do business across state lines, especially in border areas like Tunica, Washington and Wilkinson counties, were at greater risk of being mistakenly marked inactive.

Lambright explained that because much of these voters’ spending activity happens in a different state, Experian’s data could have incorrectly flagged them as living outside Mississippi.

“They’re having the address be more important than who you are,” Hall said.

Unlike numerous other jurisdictions using Experian credit data, Mississippi does not give voters an opportunity to verify their address before they’re marked inactive. As a result, the accuracy of the voter-maintenance process solely relies on the reliability of the data and the judgement used by the election commission.

In other jurisdictions that have rolled out Experian’s data, like Montana, Maryland and West Virginia, election officials used the information to identify voters who might have moved but then mailed them a notice asking them to verify their address. After, they had to wait to give the voter an opportunity to respond before changing their status.

In West Virginia and Montana, for example, that waiting period is 30 days.

Under Mississippi law, that notice, called a confirmation card, gets mailed out when election commissioners mark a voter as inactive. State Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson who previously served as a Hinds County election commissioner, said that the introduction of unverified data now casts doubt on what used to be a routine process.

“This process ultimately raises a lot of questions around how accurate this data is,” Summers said. “Is the process as transparent as it needs to be? Are these voters receiving the due process that they lawfully deserve?”

From her experience using Experian’s data to maintain her county’s voter rolls, Jacqueline Thompson said the voter-maintenance process outlined in state law could lack the necessary checks to account for flaws in consumer data. 

“Us as election commissioner, we want to protect the vote of the people,” Jacqueline Thompson said. “You have to just make sure and check and do your research, for instance, if Experian came in play with your information.”

While the actual task of voter-roll maintenance falls to election commissioners, Watson’s office is responsible for training election officials and maintaining the centralized, online system that commissioners use to maintain the voter rolls. 

It is largely up to each county’s election commission to determine how to handle Experian’s data, according to Jacqueline Thompson.

She said the unverified data puts the pressure on election commissioners to do their “due diligence” to ensure that voters aren’t wrongly made inactive and are aware when their status changes, especially because voters receive only one mailed notice under state law. 

In Washington County, Jacqueline Thompson said the election commission went beyond the requirements of state law by emailing, calling and even knocking on doors to notify voters once they were made inactive.

“We don’t want you purged, we don’t want you inactive,” Jacqueline Thompson said. “We want you to be fulfilling that civic duty, coming out to vote.”

‘They’re having the address be more important than who you are’

When Constance Slaughter-Harvey learned that her dad was forced to pay a poll tax to cast a ballot, just because he was Black in Mississippi, she committed herself toward protecting the right to vote. She became the first Black woman to graduate with a law degree from the University of Mississippi and oversaw voting for 12 years as assistant secretary of state for elections.

She never would have thought that unverified credit data would one day be used to maintain the voter rolls.

“I dedicated my life to making the right to vote accessible to all,” Slaughter-Harvey said. “This is making it more difficult and insulting to our efforts to eliminate voting barriers.”

Inactive voters aren’t barred from casting a ballot, but voting-rights advocates say they can face more barriers. They must vote on signed paper ballots at the polling place tied to the precinct they live in, instead of on the machines. As long as they still live in the county they’re registered in, they’ll be put back on the active rolls once they vote. If they live in a different county, they must re-register there.

However, paper ballots are subject to more scrutiny, and one that’s cast won’t necessarily be counted. Under state law, inactive voters’ ballots will count only if they affirm that they still live at their registered home address or an address in the same precinct.

Summers said that as election commissioner, she saw firsthand how voters could get discouraged when they found out they were inactive at the polls and had to take time to fill out a paper ballot.

“Most people have jobs where they have a very short window to vote on Election Day,” Lambright said. “They just leave, and they’re just like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll vote next time.’”

For advocates like Hall, the surge in inactive voters echoes a legacy of measures in Mississippi that have disproportionately limited Black voters’ access to the ballot — from intentional barriers, like poll taxes, to indirect obstacles, like felony disenfranchisement.

“We’re going to end up getting back to fighting for rights again, like we were in 1965 when they marched on Selma, Alabama, and Montgomery,” Hall said. “We’re going to have to go back to fighting for our voting rights.”

An August study by the EAC on Mississippi and other jurisdictions’ use of Experian’s data for voter-roll maintenance found that the data was more likely to suggest new addresses for counties with more voters of certain racial minority groups, including Black and Native American voters.

The study found that credit data could be an “additional new tool” for voter-roll maintenance, although more research had to be done on the accuracy of the information. But Amir Badat, a voting-rights attorney with the nonprofit Fair Fight Action, said the EAC’s findings could be a cause for legal concern. Under federal law, states must maintain voter rolls in a “nondiscriminatory” way.

“Whenever you’re introducing a dataset that’s not fully understood and that could have biases that we don’t fully understand, that is super concerning,” Badat said. “We have no information on how the use of this data was rolled out.”

The secretary of state’s office did not respond to requests for comment on how it ensured that voter-roll maintenance was done in a “nondiscriminatory” way with the new credit data, in compliance with federal law.

‘Reliable’ information?

The use of credit data for voter-roll maintenance in Mississippi is so new that Summers didn’t know it was even allowed under the law until Mississippi Today contacted her about it. She had never used anything other than verified government data to maintain voter rolls during her four years as an election commissioner.

But the state Legislature quietly opened the door for the secretary of state to turn to information beyond the government as a part of the voter-roll maintenance House Bill 1310 in 2023, which became law in January 2024.

Lawmakers hotly debated the bill for its provision to mark voters as inactive and eventually purge them if they didn’t vote within a series of elections. Supporters, including Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian, advocated that the bill would modernize voter-roll maintenance, especially as numerous counties grappled with inflated voter rolls. 

“When we have people on the rolls by name only and they are not actually living there, that is a vessel for fraud,” said Tate, who then chaired the Senate Elections Committee. “And yes, there is voter fraud. What this does is give our local election officials another tool to clean up their rolls.”

Currently, three of Mississippi’s 82 counties have more registered voters on the rolls than eligible voters in the Census. 

But opponents, including Summers, argued that the wording of the bill was so vague that it could be overly permissive.

Many states have laws in the books naming the exact sources that can be used for voter-roll maintenance, such as Postal Service data or death information from the Social Security Administration. But within HB 1310 was a little-debated clause that broadly allowed election officials to use “reliable information” indicating that a voter had moved from their registered residence as grounds to mark them inactive. 

The bill did not specify any standards that the information had to meet to be considered reliable, but did name examples of what would fit. All were government sources. The bill made no mention of credit data.

But in February 2025, a year after the bill the became law, Watson wrote that he was “excited to report” that HB 1310 allowed his office to sign a contract with Experian to roll out credit data for voter-roll maintenance statewide.

“We had some concerns that this process could unintentionally result in a form of voter suppression,” Summers said of HB 1310. “And we were really, truly concerned about this, particularly in those communities that are already facing barriers to participating in our elections.”

The voter-roll maintenance process outlined in HB 1310 — and its lack of verification checks — appears to conflict with the Department of Justice’s guidance on how states should comply with federal law. The department advises that states may wait to mark voters as inactive until they fail to return the notice verifying their address by the voter-registration deadline for the next election.

Mississippi doesn’t wait.

You can check your voter-registration status before heading to the polls at the secretary of state’s Y’All Vote website.

The Capitol was littered with dead bills after a major passage deadline Tuesday, most notably the House and Senate teacher pay raise proposals.

The bills were victims of ongoing, and often inexplicable, political infighting between House and Senate Republican leaders.

But the House on Friday attempted to revive its $5,000 a year teacher pay raise by grafting it onto another bill and passing it. It appears, amid public finger pointing between Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White, the two chambers will try to negotiate a teacher pay raise as next year’s statewide elections loom.

Otherwise, the Mississippi Legislature is stumbling into the final weeks of this year’s session having so far failed at the two main goals its leaders outlined in January: expanding “school choice,” including using tax dollars for private schooling, and providing the first large teacher raise since 2022.

In other news from a busy week under the dome on High Street:

• The House, through an amendment, attempted to address the “alcohol crisis,” or shortage of wine and spirits from bungling at the state-run Alcoholic Beverage Control warehouse. SB 2838, now headed to the Senate, would allow businesses to – temporarily – buy alcohol directly from any licensed sellers in the country.

• Lawmakers are trying to rush passage of a bill that could allow Greenwood Leflore Hospital, on the brink of closure, to file for bankruptcy to aid the possible takeover of the hospital’s services by the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

• Tweaks to the Public Employee Retirement System were among the measures that died from feuding between the House and Senate GOP leadership last week. They were an attempt to address complaints from first responders, teacher and others about the sea change to the system lawmakers passed last year. The more austere retirement benefits passed last year, critics say, will make recruiting and retaining state workers even harder. Like the pay raise, the House is attempting to revive PERS changes.

Quote of the Week

“I’d like to announce my disappointment.” – Sen. Daniel Sparks of Belmont, as his chamber wrapped up business on Tuesday, the last day for House and Senate committees to pass bills originating in the opposite chamber. Hundreds of bills died with the deadline. “It’s shared by all,” replied Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

In Brief

Casino revenue consistent as disruption looms

Mississippi casinos generated $2.43 billion in gross gambling revenue and $3.25 billion in total revenue in 2025, “nearly matching” the prior year, according to the Mississippi Gaming & Hospitality Association.

Gambling industry leaders convened at the Capitol for an annual state of the industry report, which outlined changes on the horizon that could prove disruptive.

As illegal online sports betting remains widespread in Mississippi, prediction market operators have expanded aggressively, arguing they are exempt from state laws banning mobile sports betting. The U.S. Supreme Court could curtail the expansion of prediction markets, but even if that happens, gaming regulators are even more concerned about the prospect of online casino gambling, or I-gaming, said Jay McDaniel, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

Some of these disruptive forces have already led to casino closures. In 2025, another casino in Tunica closed marking further contraction in what was once Mississippi’s fastest-growing market. The Tunica region continues to struggle with decreasing demand and increased competition from Arkansas and Tennessee.  – Michael Goldberg

Budget negotiations ‘fruitful’

The House and Senate have begun negotiating a $7-billion state budget.

The two chambers have passed the budget bills that originated in their chambers, and now they will start debating bills from the other chamber.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Briggs Hopson said he recently had good discussions with his House counterparts and complimented them on negotiations so far.

“I think we’re working in really good faith right now,” Hopson said. “I think the discussions have been fruitful.”

Hopson, a Republican from Vicksburg, said he plans to take the House’s budget bills up by the end of this week or early next week. – Taylor Vance

Bill would expand industrial site grants

HB 1633 would expand eligible expenses under the state’s industrial site matching grant program to include utility improvements and buying easements.

Gov. Tate Reeves has said that making more industrial sites “project-ready” is one of his top economic development priorities. Last year, he announced over $28 million in projects under the site development grant program. The Madison County Mega Site received multiple grants through the program and eventually became the home to an Amazon data center.

The bill, authored by Rep. Trey Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia, passed the Senate Finance Committee last week and heads to the full Senate. – Katherine Lin

By the Numbers

$65.3 million

Amount that state revenue for February fell short of the estimate lawmakers are using to set a state budget. That’s a 13.3% shortfall for the month. But through February, seven months into the fiscal year, total revenue is $99.5 million above the estimate.

More Legislative Coverage

‘It’s incredibly disappointing.’ Teacher pay raise bills die from politics in Legislature

Bills that would have increased teacher salaries died with a deadline at the Capitol on Tuesday, despite pleas from educators and advocates who have said for years that a teacher’s salary in Mississippi is unsustainable.  Read the story.

DraftKings and Entergy spent over $100K on a Super Bowl weekend for two Mississippi politicians, staffers and spouses

Sports gambling giant DraftKings and energy company Entergy spent a combined $107,398 on a 2025 Super Bowl weekend for House Speaker Jason White, House Public Utilities Chairman Brent Powell, White’s staff and a couple of their spouses. Read the story.

Senate committee advances plan to enhance transparency of pharmacy benefit managers

Independent pharmacists have warned year after year that their businesses could be forced to close because of low reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers. Read the story.

More than 150,000 Mississippi children could avoid having their child support gambled away if lawmakers agree on proposals moving through the Legislature.

Lawmakers in both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature have advanced bills to intercept gambling and sports betting winnings from parents delinquent on child support. Some lawmakers have pushed for years to pass similar bills.

Federal data shows Mississippi has the worst child support collection rate in the nation and one of the highest rates of child poverty. The state collected just 53% of the support payments judges ordered parents to make in 2024, compared to 65% nationally.

There are 153,964 children in Mississippi whose custodial parents are owed child support, totaling $1.7 billion, according to data obtained by Sen. David Blount, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Gaming Committee. He got those numbers, which run through Jan. 31, from the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

HB 520, authored by Rep. Jay McKnight, a Republican from Diamondhead, specifically targets cash gambling winnings and slot machine annuities. If a person has outstanding child support payments, casinos would be required to deduct the child support owed from the person’s winnings. SB 2369, authored by Rep. Walter Michael, a Republican from Ridgeland, contains many of the same provisions. 

The bills would require the state Gaming Commission to collaborate with MDHS, the state’s welfare agency that oversees the child support program, to maintain a database of individuals with outstanding child support.

Blount said the only difference between the House and Senate bills is that the House proposal allows people to challenge the withholding of their winnings in court. The Senate bill would allow people who have their winnings withheld to challenge their status on the database maintained by MDHS.

“I prefer the Senate bill, I hope they pass the Senate bill, but we want to get this done for the more than $1.5 billion of child support that is owed to the children of the state of Mississippi,” Blount said.

The proposals would mostly impact slot machine winnings of more than $2,000, Blount said, because gaming licensees are required to report those winnings to the Internal Revenue Service.

Similar laws already exist in several other states, including Louisiana. In the first nine years, the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services intercepted an average of nearly $1 million a year from casinos, according to the National Child Support Engagement Association.