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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Mississippi voters Tuesday repealed language from the state’s 1890 Constitution that could prevent candidates winning a majority of the vote from taking office.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The language repealed by Tuesday’s vote mandated that candidates running for the eight statewide offices do two things: garner a majority of the vote and win the most votes in a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.

The post For the first time in state history, voters remove Jim Crow provision from Mississippi Constitution appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.

The post Mississippi voters approve medical marijuana program appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.

The post Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defeats Democrat Mike Espy for full six-year term appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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.

The post Mississippians adopt new state flag after Confederate emblem flew for 126 years appeared first on Mississippi Today.

READ: ‘How long did you have to wait?’ Long lines, record turnout the story of 2020 Election Day in Mississippi 

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Editor’s note: Erica Hensley reported from Hinds, Rankin and Madison counties. Tom Wright reported from Harrison, Stone, Forrest and Simpson counties. Kate Royals reported from Lauderdale and Neshoba counties. Anna Wolfe reported from Lawrence, Franklin, Jefferson, Pike and Amite counties. Aallyah Wright reported from DeSoto, Panola and Coahoma counties. Kelsey Davis Betz reported from Bolivar, Attala and Washington counties. Alex Rozier reported from Lee and Oktibbeha counties. Brittany Brown reported from Lafayette and Yalobusha counties.

Across the state, thousands of Mississippi voters found themselves in long lines outside their polling places waiting to cast a vote. Though the wait in some places took more than an hour, many voters said the process felt easy and safe.

In the metro Jackson area, lines were already filled with hundreds of voters when the polls opened at 7 a.m. Most voters Mississippi Today spoke to were upbeat and happy to stand in line, though they all said they’ve never seen a wait like this, which averaged about 45 minutes depending on the precinct.

Around 9 a.m. at the Fondren precinct in Jackson, one voter near the end of a long line shouted out to someone exiting the polling place: “Excuse me, ma’am, how long did you have to wait?” Her response, yelled across the parking lot: “About an hour!”

Lines in Madison were even longer. The new split off from Ridgeland Recreational Center to The Mark Apartments wrapped down Lake Harbour Drive on Tuesday morning.

In Canton, waits hit up to two hours at a 1,300 voter precinct, where the poll manager shuts down the in-person voting whenever there are curbside voters, of which there were five by 12:30 p.m. Poll manager Kimberly Archie understood this to be the expectation from the secretary of state’s office.

A few hours north, poll workers Vicki Jarrett and Deborah West said it was a busy morning at Lee County’s busiest polling location, the Tupelo Furniture Market. About 2,800 people had voted there before 4 p.m., they said. With people still coming to vote after work, they expect the total will easily surpass the roughly 3,500 cast there in the 2016 presidential election.

They said voters adhered to COVID-19 guidelines, with all but one person so far wearing a mask. About 20 voters used the curbside service, which was available to voters who could not enter the building or were showing symptoms of COVID-19.

“We’ve been wiping down, there’s been somebody going around sanitizing the poll booths,” Jarrett said. “I’m really pleased with the reaction of the community as far as abiding by the guidelines.”

At another Tupelo precinct by Legion Lake, poll worker Chris Murphy said they already had the biggest turnout in more than 10 years, despite a recent location change that wasn’t reflected on the secretary of state’s precinct list as of last week. Murphy said they had already received about 80% of that precinct’s eligible votes by about 3 p.m.

The line of voters at the Oxford Conference Center, the largest precinct in Lafayette County, was wrapped around the parking lot on Tuesday morning. The same scene played out at the county’s second largest precinct, the Lafayette Civic Center serving 5,162 active voters.

A few people in Oxford said they had not seen lines at the polling places in recent elections. One voter, Alonzo Hilliard, a University of Mississippi alumnus and Oxford resident, called the long lines “encouraging.”

“It’s record-breaking,” Hilliard said. “It’s just time for a change.”

Historic turnout was not reserved for large, populated precincts. In Water Valley, the voting scene was much different and calmer than the polls in Oxford. There were no lines wrapped around parking lots or buildings, but a slow and steady stream of voters coming in and out of their polling places.

Yalobusha County election commissioner Steve Cummings said the longest line he had seen at his precinct was probably 20 to 25 people but said Tuesday’s election “could be the biggest” for the county. Another Yalobusha County election commissioner, Missy Kimzie, said the courthouse was busy with voters Tuesday morning, which she called “very unusual.”

In rural southwest Mississippi, even the smallest communities saw unusually crowded polling places. But while some people had to spend more time waiting than usual, there were few complaints of the overall process.

At the Tangipahoa precinct, a standalone polling place in unincorporated Amite County, a line of voters stretched down a hill to the country highway. They had collected more than 200 votes from their 636 registered voters by mid-afternoon. One elderly man, who’s voted there for 40 years, told Mississippi Today it was the first time he hadn’t been able to walk straight into the building to cast his ballot. And he drove by three times before finally joining the line.

At one of the state’s tiniest precincts called NOLA in the unincorporated community Sontag, a voter arrived at 6 a.m. to cast his ballot, a poll manager said. Twelve out of 67 registered voters had visited in the first three hours of the day, but there have been elections in the past where 12 votes was the day’s total, workers said.

Workers at the Navilla Baptist Church polling location in McComb, one of the largest precincts in Pike County, were especially overwhelmed tending to a steady line of several dozen well into the afternoon with no signs of slowing down. They’d recorded 508 votes out of 1,703 registered voters by about 2 p.m.

Gulf Coast voters stood in extremely long lines on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning, voters wrapped around the Lyman Community Center and around St. Joseph Catholic Church in Gulfport.

Voters lined up in the sun D’Iberville Civic Center, with some reporting a 90-minute wait shortly before 1 p.m.

The lines in many voting locations in Meridian remained short on Election Day morning, the Lauderdale County Circuit Clerk’s office was buzzing with voters trying to find their correct voting locations. District 1 Election Commissioner Chuck Overby said it was a chaotic but good day.

“There’s people who are voting (today) that haven’t voted in years,” Overby said. Despite the confusion for some, though, he emphasized people were not being turned away.

“They all get to vote because they just vote affidavit,” he said. “We don’t turn anybody down to vote.”

Some voters in Meridian were confused Tuesday because their polling places had been changed recently, and they either did not receive notice or misunderstood when they were notified. But for many, the process was smooth.

First-time voter Jermaine Scott and several others who voted at the Raymond P. Davis County Annex Courthouse Building downtown, the process went well.

“It was actually quick, and I felt safe and comfortable,” Scott said, noting everyone inside was wearing a mask. “It was a calm environment.”

In Coahoma and Panola counties, voters said the process was easy, citing short wait times and adequate safety precautions.

At the Lee Drive Fire Station in Clarksdale, several voters waiting on the six machines said they could not safely distance from one another due to the minimal space in the fire station. But Patricia Cachafeiro, 53, said otherwise, voting there was calm and organized.

“It just went very smoothly,” she said.

To avoid the high traffic morning crowd at the Batesville Courthouse — one of the largest polling locations in the area — Kiffney Smith, 39, voted a little before noon. Inside her precinct, rows of pews separated the voters to ensure social distance. She said it took her only 10 minutes to cast her ballot. “The process was faster than I expected,” Smith said.

In Sardis, about 10 miles north of Batesville, Linden Leakes echoed Smith, stating his voting experience was great. His polling place, the Sardis Courthouse, had fewer than five voters inside at the time he voted.

Polling locations in Shaw, Mound Bayou and Cleveland were busier than usual, but did not see as long of lines as metro areas around the state.

Jacqueline Mitchell, a poll worker in Cleveland, said about 500 people had already voted there by 10 a.m., which is much higher than what she saw in 2016. That polling location serves 1,667 people, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

For Jamelle Banks, who moved from Atlanta to Cleveland six months ago, the quieter polling location was a welcome change.

“This is so much better,” Banks said. “In Atlanta when I voted, lines were around the corner for hours. So this is a big difference. It’s a big change for me, but it’s a nice one.”

In Shaw, Cora Jackson said the consistent activity she’s seen at her polling location reminds her of what she knows about what voting in the civil rights era was like.

“I’ve watched some of the videos from voting in the 60s, and this too resonates with some of that same kind of foresight that people feel the need to go out and cast their vote,” Jackson said.

The post ‘How long did you have to wait?’ Long lines, record turnout the story of 2020 Election Day in Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

MERIDIAN — Some Lauderdale County voters said they received no notification they had a different polling place after county officials, less than two months before Election Day, moved polling places for about 1,650 voters.

The Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors made the move on Sept. 8 to provide more space for social distancing and enhance voter privacy and parking access, according to board documents. The changes were requested by the county’s Election Commission and voted on by the supervisors.

While some residents did hear about the change, they were confused by the correspondence they received from the county.

One voter, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, said he and his mother received a letter stating the Raymond P. Davis Building County Courthouse Annex in downtown Meridian was their “new voting location for county elections,” with “county elections” underlined.

But since Tuesday’s election is a federal election, he and his mother took that to mean they would continue voting at the Central Fire Station as they had in previous elections. When he showed up at the fire station Tuesday before 7 a.m., no one was there and no signage was posted.

Kate Royals/Mississippi Today

The Raymond P. Davis Building – County Courthouse Annex in downtown Meridian is the new location for those who used to vote at Central Fire Station.

“It was about 7:55 a.m. before a gentleman showed up and told us that we are not supposed to be there to vote and that we were supposed to be at the Raymond P. Davis Annex building,” he said.

District 2 Election Commissioner Consuela Rue said the letter was written that way because residents of that part of her district vote at one precinct for city elections and another for county elections.

“For municipal elections, they have different precincts,” she said, noting that she has recommended to city officials that they also transfer those municipal precincts to the Annex Building to decrease voter confusion.

Kate Royals/Mississippi Today

Reginald Cole acts as a “stander,” or a person who stands and redirects voters at a closed precinct, at the Central Fire Station in Meridian. A handwritten sign taped to his car directs people to their new polling location.

On Tuesday around 11 a.m., Reginald Cole was parked outside the Central Fire Station acting as a “stander,” or someone who redirects voters to the correct precinct. Cole had two handwritten signs taped to his car directing people to vote at the Annex Building about a half mile away. Voters would drive by and roll down their windows, and he directed them away.

He estimated that by that time, about 50 people had come to the fire station to attempt to vote.

One of those was Ina Campbell, who was planning to vote on her lunch break. She told Mississippi Today she received no notification of a change.

Two other precincts, Prospect and Andrews Chapel, were merged together into a single precinct at Gracepointe Fellowship to improve its compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and to provide a larger room for voting.

“… such improved facilities for disabled voters and elderly voters will enhance the voting process for all persons involved,” the board of supervisors’ Sept. 8 order states.

County officials also approved relocating the polling precinct at the First Baptist Church of Lauderdale to the Gateway Church. The decision was made after First Baptist Church requested to no longer be a polling place, according to the order.

Gateway is a handicapped accessible facility with sufficient parking and an “adequate area” for voting, the order stated.

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