Effort to revive Mississippi ballot initiative process is squelched in state Senate

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi legislators are unlikely to restore a ballot initiative process this year after a Senate chairman killed a proposal Monday.

The move came days after the Senate voted 26-21 to pass a bill that would have allowed Mississippi residents to put some policy proposals on statewide ballots. But the bill needed another Senate debate and that never happened because Republican Sen. David Parker, of Olive Branch, who chairs the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee, didn’t bring it back up before a Monday deadline.

Parker said last week that efforts to revive an initiative process were “on life support” because of significant differences between the House and Senate. Republicans control both chambers.

Starting in the 1990s, Mississippi had a process for people to put proposed state constitutional amendments on the ballot, requiring an equal number of signatures from each of the five congressional districts. Mississippi dropped to four districts after the 2000 census, but initiative language was never updated. That prompted the Mississippi Supreme Court to invalidate the initiative process in a 2021 ruling.

In 2022 and 2023, the House and Senate disagreed on details for a new initiative process.

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