The Mississippi Legislature has made it pretty obvious: It doesn’t really want to restore the citizens’ right to go around it.
If there’s to be an initiative law, according to the signals it is sending during the current legislative session, it wants to be able to restrict what issues can be put to a referendum; to be able to easily override whatever the people decide; and to make it nearly impossible to meet the signature requirements.
In essence, it wants an initiative law that is mostly a farce, one that would be so much more limited and difficult than the one that was thrown out two years ago by the state Supreme Court on a technicality.
One proposed major change to the process has merit. Instead of allowing the public to unilaterally alter the state constitution, as the old initiative process provided, the new process would restrict so-called “people power” to adopting new statutes. That’s a better system, making it easier for lawmakers to address problems that might have been unforeseen at the time an initiative was passed, rather than having to wait for another statewide vote.
Most everything else being proposed is a betrayal of what the public had a right to expect following the Supreme Court decision.
Mississippi’s previous initiative process was already plenty difficult. Only a handful of attempts over three decades were able to meet all the requirements to get on the ballot. There’s no good argument for making it even more rare.
