‘Not while I’m governor!’ Reeves vows to block Mississippi early, mail-in voting
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday vowed to never allow universal mail-in voting or early voting in Mississippi under his watch.
Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday, as the nation awaits the counting of absentee votes in several states to decide the presidential election, vowed to never allow universal mail-in voting or early voting in Mississippi under his watch.
“… based on what I see in other states today, I will also do everything in my power to make sure universal mail-in voting and no-excuse early voting are not allowed in MS—not while I’m governor!” the Republican governor tweeted on Thursday. “Too much chaos. Only way it’d happen is if many GOP legislators override a veto!”
Reeves also vowed to “do everything in my power to ensure every ballot legally cast in the 2020 election in Mississippi gets counted” as several counties’ totals had not come in as of Thursday. One race, for state Supreme Court, had not been called. This lag was largely due to an unprecedented large absentee vote, despite Mississippi’s strict absentee voting rules.
Several Republican-controlled states such as Texas, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee allow early or universal mail-in voting.
Reeves’ office did not immediately respond to a request for further explanation of his veto vows on Thursday.
President Donald Trump continues to claim Democrats are trying to steal the election from him through absentee and mail-in voter fraud, and his campaign has filed multiple lawsuits even as votes are being counted. Election officials and experts insist there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and the process is working as it should. Mississippi GOP leaders have also cited voter fraud in support of restrictive voting regulations without evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the state.
One reason for the presidential vote delay is because several states that are still counting ballots as of Thursday afternoon are controlled by Republican elected officials, who passed policy that ensured absentee ballots could not begin to be counted until Election Day. Mississippi does not allow absentees to be counted until after the polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Mississippi has a dark history of Jim Crow voter suppression after Black citizens were given the right to vote. The state’s laws remain some of the most restrictive in the nation. Reform of Mississippi voting laws or allowing easier access in recent years has often been a partisan battle, with Republicans reluctant to ease restrictions.
Mississippi was the only state not to provide all citizens an option to vote early rather than going to crowded polls on Tuesday amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As every other state expanded some version of early voting for the pandemic, Mississippi’s Republican leaders let several bills to address the issue die.
READ MORE: Legislative leaders, once again, say they will not expand early voting during pandemic.
“Even today, in 2020, we continue to fight against old and outdated policies and practices aimed to suppress the vote,” said Corey Wiggins, executive director of the Mississippi NAACP.
State Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, a longtime advocate of reform of Mississippi’s restrictive voting regulations, said he believes Reeves’ vow is anathema to what the state’s voters want.
“More than 40 states in this country have early voting,” Blount said. “Early voting is completely secure. You walk in past a deputy sheriff into the courthouse, show your photo ID … it’s completely secure. I believe most Mississippians want it, regardless of party, regardless of who you voted for for president. People want choices, want options. If we are going to run government like a business — you would never say, ‘Come buy my product, but you’re going to have to wait in line three or four hours before I sell it to you.’ We should treat the customers, or citizens, to an efficient, safe process that meets their needs and their schedules. That’s why an overwhelming number of states, both red and blue, allow early voting.”
In Mississippi, only people who are over 65 years old, those who are going to be away from their home area on Election Day and people with disabilities are allowed to vote early either in person or by mail. To mail in an absentee ballot, a voter must have both the ballot application and the ballot notarized.
Blount said: “Mississippi has the most restrictive mail-in process in the country. Even if you don’t change eligibility for mail in, it needs to be more user friendly. Forcing people to get two different documents notarized — no other state in the country has that. Mississippi has a long history of making it hard to vote, and I believe Mississippians in both parties want to see progress.”
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All-virtual Jackson Public Schools receives 4,000 devices to get students connected
Around 4,000 Chromebooks arrived at the Jackson Public School District’s warehouse on Thursday as part of the state’s massive effort to provide a device for every student.
Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America
Superintendent Dr. Errick L. Greene speaks during a public meeting about the findings of the student based study on the school district during a public meeting at the Jackson Convention Complex Thursday, November 29, 2018.
“It’s a happy day in Jackson,” said superintendent Errick Greene as he posed for a picture with fellow administrators, lawmakers and officials from the Mississippi Department of Education outside the warehouse.
The remaining 11,000 devices, which were purchased independently by the district, are scheduled to be delivered by Nov. 20, said Greene. The batch of devices delivered Thursday was ordered through the Mississippi Department of Education’s purchasing program.
The coronavirus pandemic forced districts across the state to reconsider how to operate safely this school year, and JPS made the decision to conduct school entirely virtually for the fall semester. Greene said these devices are for the nearly 5,000 students in the district who do not have a device or connectivity — particularly second graders and older.
“There are needs all over the district,” said Greene. “We’ve got about 25% of our scholars who are learning asynchronously — without a device and (using take-home) packets, that sort of thing. Our biggest priority is getting them connected.”
Kate Royals/Mississippi Today
One of 13 boxes filled with Chromebooks is delivered into the Jackson Public School District’s warehouse.
The district’s Chief Operating Officer Joe Albright said those students and their schools have been identified, and the devices will be delivered to those schools for parent pick up next week. Students will also be able to pick up WiFi hotspots if needed. The students who don’t receive one of the 4,000 devices delivered this week will receive one after future shipments arrive.
Around 150,000 devices of the 390,000 ordered statewide have been delivered as of Thursday, according to John Kraman, chief information officer at the Mississippi Department of Education. Another 100,000 are scheduled for next week and the remainder for the following week.
The deadline for delivery is Nov. 20, as determined by the state education department’s contract with its vendor. The deadline for schools to be reimbursed by the state for the devices is Dec. 1.
The Legislature earlier this year appropriated $200 million of Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding to the state education department to assist districts in implementing distance learning plans.
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Supreme Court election between Griffis, Westbrooks remains unresolved
Kenny Griffis and Latrice Westbrooks are running for a Mississippi Supreme Court seat on Nov. 3.
The Central District Supreme Court race between incumbent Justice Kenny Griffis and challenger Latrice Westbrooks is Mississippi’s only districtwide or statewide contest that has yet to be resolved from Tuesday’s elections.
The Associated Press, which is the media outlet in Mississippi that normally accumulates statewide vote totals and calls elections, has not made a final call in the Central District Supreme Court race.
Griffis has 52.2% of the vote and leads by a margin of almost 14,172 votes, according to numbers from the Associated Press. But according to election officials, about 18,000 absentee ballots were still being counted in Democratic stronghold Hinds County on Wednesday afternoon, and about 17,000 absentee ballots were still being counted in Republican bulwark Rankin County.
While judicial candidates run in non-partisan elections, Westbrooks enjoys strong support among Democratic voters as Griffis does with Republicans. Other ballots may also remain to be counted in the Delta portion of the Central District.
But it is not clear whether those outstanding ballots were cast by Republican or Democrats. Nationwide, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats have been much more apt to vote early.
Griffis, the former chief judge on the Court of Appeals, was appointed to the Supreme Court in February 2019 by then-Gov. Phil Bryant to replace Chief Justice Bill Waller, who retired. Griffis is a Meridian native who now lives in Madison County.
Westbrooks is in her first term on the Court of Appeals representing District 2, which consists of Jackson and a large slice of west Mississippi. She is vying to be the first African American woman to serve on the state’s highest court and only the fifth Black member. The nine-member court has never had two African American members on it at the same time in modern history. The Court currently consists of one woman — Dawn Beam of the Southern District — and one Black member — Leslie King of the Central District — and seven white men.
In one other contested Supreme Court race, incumbent Justice Josiah Coleman won reelection to his Northern District seat on Tuesday, defeating DeSoto County Chancery Judge Percy Lynchard. Coleman, who lives in Choctaw County, is finishing his first eight-year term on the Supreme Court.
Statewide, votes continue to come in. There was speculation that this year’s presidential election would set a record for turnout in the state. The most votes ever cast in Mississippi occurred in 2008, when 1,289,939 voted in the election between Barack Obama and John McCain. The current count is a little more than 1 million votes cast Tuesday, but that number will increase as additional ballots are counted, but whether it will reach record turnout remains to be seen.
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Here’s what happened on Election Day in Mississippi
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
A festive reminder to vote placed at St. John M.B. Church for those traveling the Northside Drive/Medgar Evers Blvd. corridor in Jackson on Tuesday.
Mississippi voters on Tuesday re-elected a U.S. senator, four congressmen and three state Supreme Court justices, and they voted to pass three key ballot initiatives.
Here’s a recap of what happened on Election Day 2020:
• “How long did you have to wait?” Long lines, record turnout became the big story of 2020 Election Day in Mississippi. Mississippi Today reporters filed dispatches from 24 of the state’s counties to tell the story.
• Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Democrat Mike Espy for a full six-year term. Hyde-Smith barely campaigned this cycle, while Espy was historically well-funded. Hyde-Smith boastfully critiqued Espy from the stage after her win.
• Mississippians voted to adopt a new state flag after the Confederate emblem flew over the state for 126 years. Voters ratified a new state flag design featuring the words “In God We Trust” after the old flag, the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem, was removed by lawmakers earlier this year.
• Mississippians voted to adopt a medical marijuana program. Many state leaders worked hard to oppose it, arguing the program was too broad and the state would become awash in pot. Voters definitively rejected that argument Tuesday, and the program will likely soon be implemented.
• For the first time in the state’s history, voters — not the federal courts — chose to remove a Jim Crow provision from the state constitution. The provision, effectively a state electoral college, dealt with how statewide candidates were elected.
• All four U.S. congressional incumbents — Republicans Trent Kelly, Michael Guest and Steven Palazzo, and Democrat Bennie Thompson — were reelected. Mississippi Supreme Court Justices Josiah Coleman, Leslie King and Mike Randolph were reelected. Just one outstanding question remains: Who won central district Supreme Court race between Kenny Griffis and Latrice Westbrooks? Mississippi Today will provide Wednesday updates on that race.
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For the first time in state history, voters remove Jim Crow provision from Mississippi Constitution
Wikimedia Commons
The Mississippi Legislature in 1890, the year a constitutional convention formed wit the stated goal of disenfranchising African Americans in the state. Several provisions of that constitution have been the subject of lawsuits in recent years, most recently a requirement that statewide candidates capture a majority of state House districts to win election.
Mississippi voters Tuesday repealed language from the state’s 1890 Constitution that could prevent candidates winning a majority of the vote from taking office.
The vote marks the first time Mississippians on their own, without federal courts stepping in, have opted to remove from the Constitution one of the multiple Jim Crow-era provisions designed to prevent African Americans from holding office.
Other Jim Crow provisions of the 1890 Constitution such as the poll tax, literacy test and separate-but-equal school districts were removed by Mississippi voters long after they were found unconstitutional by federal courts or they were banned by federal law. In other words, while these provisions were still in the state Constitution, they were no longer being enforced because of federal action.
The language repealed by Tuesday’s vote mandated that candidates running for the eight statewide offices do two things: garner a majority of the vote and win the most votes in a majority of the 122 House districts. Under the constitutional provisions, if no candidate was able to do both, the election was thrown to the House to decide between the top two vote-getters.
A lawsuit was filed in 2019 challenging the constitutionality of the language throwing election into the House, often called Mississippi’s version of the electoral college. In response to the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan of the Southern District of Mississippi indicated that if the state did not remove the provision, he might be forced to do so.
“I assume the judge would love for the state to address this,” Secretary of State Michael Watson said earlier this year. “It is something I think he would prefer.”
The Legislature’s two presiding officers, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in the Senate and House Speaker Philip Gunn, also got behind the effort to remove the language.
Gov. Tate Reeves, on the other hand, never gave an endorsement of the proposed change, saying it was designed “to help elect Democrats” to statewide office.
No other state has provisions that would prevent the person garnering the majority of the vote from being seated. Tuesday’s vote still leaves the state outside of the mainstream in terms of electing candidates. Most states – 46 of them – require a candidate for statewide office to win only a plurality of the vote. The provision Mississippians adopted, crafted by the legislative leadership, mandates a runoff among the top two vote-getters if no candidate garners a majority of the vote.
It takes approval by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of the Legislature and then the approval by voters to change the Constitution. The Constitution also can be changed through a complex citizen initiative process.
The 2019 lawsuit alleged the process of throwing the elections into the House dilutes Black voter strength. Black Mississippians are more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate, but because House districts are drawn to maximize the number of Republicans serving in the House, it is difficult for Democratic candidates to win the most votes in a majority of the House districts, the lawsuit claimed.
The language was placed in the Constitution in 1890 at a time when African Americans were a majority in the state. The lawsuit cited a volume of the Mississippi Historical Society as saying the Constitution was written in 1890 in a manner to ensure the white minority controlled the House of Representatives and was “the legal basis and bulwark of the design of white supremacy in a state with an overwhelming and growing negro majority.”
In the 1990s, three races were thrown into the House. In two elections for lieutenant governor, the losing candidate — Brad Dye in 1991 and Eddie Briggs in 1995 — asked the House to select the candidate who won the most votes. In 1999, Republican Mike Parker, who lost the popular vote, unsuccessfully took the election to the House where Democrat Ronnie Musgrove, who garnered the most votes, was elected by the representatives.
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Mississippi voters approve medical marijuana program
Mississippi voters approved Initiative 65, a citizen-sponsored proposal that legalizes medical marijuana.
Many state leaders argued the initiative was too broad and would approve marijuana with few restrictions. Voters rejected that argument on Tuesday, according to a declaration of victory by the initiative’s campaign. Unofficial vote counts tallied by the Associated Press show a wide margin of support from Mississippians.
While allowing medical use of marijuana has, according to polling, been popular with Mississippi voters, Tuesday’s vote was complicated and divisive.
A group of Mississippians, led in part by state Rep. Joel Bomgar, R-Madison, utilized the state’s ballot initiative process to put the question — Initiative 65 — on a statewide ballot. That process, completed in 2019, required about 100,000 petition signatures from Mississippians across the state.
But after years of balking at the issue at the Capitol, lawmakers opted earlier this year to place an alternative, Initiative 65-A, to the citizen-sponsored medical marijuana initiative, on the ballot.
This set up a ballot that required voters to first vote yes or no on whether they wanted either initiative to pass, then to pick one of the two. Another stipulation is that the winning proposal also must receive votes equaling 40% of the total votes cast in the election. Initiative 65 passed both those thresholds Tuesday.
One major debate was whether to put legalized medical marijuana into the state Constitution, as opposed to setting up a program in state law with legislative oversight. Both Initiative 65 and the alternative would amend the Constitution. Opponents of Initiative 65 argued that adopting it would prohibit elected leaders from regulating or improving the program.
Opponents also said Initiative 65 would leave Mississippi awash in pot and that it lacks thorough regulations or the ability to change or add them. Proponents said the legislative alternative Initiative 65A was so restrictive that it would effectively prevent sick Mississippians from being able to use a treatment helping millions of people in other states.
The city of Madison, led by Mayor Mary Hawkins, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s initiative process, and the lawsuit could place Tuesday’s election results in jeopardy. The lawsuit centers on the issue that the Constitution mandates that the signatures be gathered equally from the five congressional districts as they were drawn in 1990, In 2000, the state lost a congressional district, but the Legislature has not changed the language in the initiative law to require the signatures to be gathered from the four districts.
The Supreme Court opted not to rule on the case until after the election.
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Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defeats Democrat Mike Espy for full six-year term
U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith celebrates with her family standing in the background at her election night party in Jackson on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith was reelected Tuesday, defeating Democratic challenger Mike Espy, according to unofficial results tallied by the Associated Press.
“What we found out today is Mississippi is not for sale,” Hyde-Smith said, referring to Espy out-raising and out-spending her campaign at least 2-1. “The only thing better than beating Mike Espy is beating him twice.”
“It was good and evil on the ballot today,” Hyde-Smith told a crowd Tuesday night at the state Agriculture Museum, where dozens of her supporters gathered for a watch party. “It was protecting the lives of the unborn … It was protecting our Second Amendment rights.
“… God is so good,” Hyde-Smith continued. “He has provided … It looks like President Trump is in pretty good shape tonight, too.”
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves introduced Hyde-Smith at her victory party and predicted other GOP wins Tuesday night.
“Not only are we in Mississippi electing a conservative to the U.S. Senate, but electing someone to go back to Washington and still be in the majority in the United States Senate,” Reeves said, “and that’s critically important.”
Hyde-Smith, 61, is a cattle farmer, former state agriculture commissioner and a former state senator. She served as a Democrat for much of her time in the Legislature before switching parties in 2010 before her statewide run for agriculture commissioner.
Espy, 66, is an attorney and former U.S. secretary of agriculture in the Clinton administration and former U.S. representative from 1987-1993. He was the first African American to represent Mississippi in Congress since Reconstruction.
The race was a rematch. Espy and Hyde-Smith squared off in a 2018 special election after Hyde-Smith was temporarily appointed to the Senate seat by Gov. Phil Bryant after the late Sen. Thad Cochran resigned. Hyde-Smith ultimately won that race, in a runoff, 53.6% to Espy’s 46.4%. The 2018 special election generated large turnout for an election held in a non-presidential year with more than 800,000 voting, but the turnout was much less than the estimated 1.3 million who voted this year.
This year’s rematch was not expected to be competitive, with Mississippi one of the reddest states in the country and Donald Trump atop the ticket and Hyde-Smith being one of his staunchest supporters in the Senate. Riding an apparent large lead, Hyde-Smith ran a low-key campaign, with few open-to-the-public appearances. She refused to debate Espy even as he flooded the airwaves with ads and had a large, well-funded field operation.
The Espy campaign, which followed strict COVID-19 guidelines, held an understated post-election event with a limited number of attendees at the Mississippi Two Museums Tuesday night. As it became obvious that Espy would not succeed, the mood became more somber, but most of the small group of attendees remained until what was the bitter end.
A subdued Espy told the news media after the race was called that he believed he ran the best campaign he could, but a strong showing by the president in Mississippi helped carry Hyde-Smith to victory.
Thanking his staff, volunteers and supporters, Espy said, “I think we ran a good race. I know I left it all on the field…We did all we could do to win this race, but it was not enough.”
Democratic Senate challenger Mike Espy concedes to incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith at the Mississippi Two Museums on Nov. 3, 2020.
Espy congratulated Hyde-Smith, but did not back away from a common theme from his campaign that his opponent was an ineffective senator.
“She won tonight. I congratulate her,” he said. “She will do what she will do…I still think she is holding Mississippi back, but that opinion did not prevail.”
Espy, who raised a record amount of money for a Democratic candidate in the state, said he left an infrastructure, including data and other information, that can be useful to help the struggling state Democratic Party.
“We built an infrastructure. We built a bridge,” he said. “Even though I was not able to cross that bridge, others after me will be able to.”
Campaign Manager Joe O’Hearn said, “I think Mike has built something special here that put Mississippi on the map as a battleground state.”
The race received scant national attention until late in the cycle, after Espy appeared to gain some momentum and the national Democratic Party apparatus provided him some eleventh-hour financial support.
Espy’s campaign outraised Hyde-Smith for most of the election cycle — unheard of for a Mississippi Democrat against an incumbent GOP senator. The final tally is expected to show him leading at least 2-1 in fundraising. Espy was buoyed by a nationwide flood of cash to Democratic congressional candidates, and the campaign’s final full finance reports before Tuesday showed Espy had raised nearly $9.3 million as of Oct. 14. Hyde-Smith had raised just under $3 million.
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Mississippians adopt new state flag after Confederate emblem flew for 126 years
Voters approved the “In God We Trust” design selected by an appointed commission after the Confederate emblem was removed earlier this year. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Mississippi voters, after decades of debate and a failed ballot effort 19 years ago, adopted a new state flag on Tuesday, according to NBC News and Associated Press projections.
The flag, approved by a majority of voters, features the words “In God We Trust” instead of the divisive Confederate battle emblem that previously flew for 126 years.
The Mississippi Legislature in June removed the old flag, which was adopted by racist lawmakers in 1894. It was the last in the nation to carry the divisive Confederate battle emblem. Lawmakers faced growing pressure from religious, business, sports and community leaders to remove the vestige of the state’s Jim Crow past from a flag flying over the state with the largest percentage population of Black residents.
An appointed commission reviewed about 3,000 public submissions for new flag designs over the summer and in September chose the new design with a magnolia and stars — a combination of multiple submissions.
Lawmakers left ratification of a replacement flag up to voters, who had the option of voting “yes” or “no” on adopting the new design. Had a majority of Mississippians rejected the new design on Tuesday, the commission would have gone back to the drawing board and presented a new design to voters.
Several Black lawmakers and activists worked for decades to change the state flag. A coalition of white and Black legislators ushered the change through the Capitol this summer.
Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn has been a leading advocate of removing the old flag and was the first prominent state Republican leader to push for change.
“While the rest of the world seems to be dividing over protests and political agendas, Mississippians are setting an example with the ‘In God We Trust’ flag by pointing the rest of the world to the answer to all of our problems: in God we trust,” Gunn said recently.
The new flag has a magnolia — the official state tree and flower — blossom on a blue background surrounded by stars with gold and red vertical stripes on the ends. It has one prominent star made of diamonds, representing Native Americans who first inhabited the area, and a ring of smaller stars denoting Mississippi becoming the 20th state in 1817.
The Legislature, when it voted to remove the old flag, stipulated in law that whatever design is put before voters, it must have the words “In God We Trust” on it, and that it could not have the Confederate emblem.
Nina Hill (left) stands outside a precinct in Monticello asking for volunteers for a petition to reverse the state flag change, done by the Legislature in June, and put it to a people’s vote.
One group, Let Mississippi Vote, hopes to overturn the Legislature’s removal of the old flag. It plans to mount a petition drive to place on the ballot — as early as 2022 — an initiative that would allow voters to restore the 1894 flag, or select other options including the In God We Trust flag. The group said it intended to have people at polls on Tuesday collecting names and information for its drive.
In a 2001 referendum, 64% of Mississippi voters voted to keep the 1894 flag, and some were angered that the Legislature this year removed it without putting it before a popular vote.
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