To the Editor,
The Republican party, including Mississippi’s GOP with its choke hold on state government, likes to brag that its main virtue is the support of freedom, especially freedom from government control over citizens’ daily lives. On the other hand, actually allowing citizens to exercise freedom over their lives causes Republican lawmakers to suddenly start gagging. They yammer that yes, of course, we want freedom, but we don’t want people to have that kind of freedom! We only want people to have those freedoms which the GOP approves of, not ones they choose for themselves.
So what can citizens do if they don’t like whatever a political party in power permits them to do, or forbids them to do? The United States politically is an “indirect democracy.” Citizens have the power to exercise “the vote,” but the vote is not a direct one. Citizens only get to vote for politicians who then are supposed to do what the people voting for them want them to do. This is usually by enacting legislation or laws. This is why U.S. democracy is indirect. People don’t typically vote on legislation themselves. They elect politicians to do that for them.
So what can citizens do if they vote for politicians who then don’t do what the people voting for them want? Also, what happens to the voice of citizens who didn’t vote for these politicians to begin with. One answer is to vote them out next time or vote someone else in. This turn around might take years though. Furthermore, what happens when common perceptions exist that the politicians in power are able to stay there because they are “in the pocket” of wealthy or well monied interests. When monied interests have the ability to keep their people in power, despite intense opposition, voting begins to feel useless. Gerrymandering and voter suppression also enhance the ability to stay in power once there. Lying that election results are fraudulent is an attempt to do so as well. A recent Star-Herald opinion essentially said that Gov. Reeves will stay in office for 2024, despite intense dislike surrounding him, simply because he has enough money in his “coffers” to stay there! So why vote?
What can citizens do then, when they think politicians aren’t listening, refuse to listen, feel they don’t have to listen, and basically could care less as long as monied interests, manipulation of voting districts, control of voting access and even attempted lies can keep them in office. This is where “direct democracy” can enter and allow people an opportunity to at least try to be heard. How is direct democracy exercised? In Mississippi, direct democracy has historically been possible through a process called “ballot initiative.” This allows citizens to gather signatures for an initiative. If enough signatures are gathered, the initiative is put on a ballot. It can then be voted on by direct vote of the people. Lawmakers and politicians are prevented from intervening or silencing the people’s voice. For example, if the people of Mississippi are fed up with being the only state with a whopping 7% tax on food groceries, a ballot initiative might bypass a dithering legislature and oppositional governor to change it.
Are ballot initiatives then a form of “power to the people?” In Mississippi, not quite. Notice that “historically” Mississippi had a ballot initiative. It was a hard process to get one, taking from around 1917 until 1992, because of opposition. Mississippi was the last state in the U.S. to get one, but finally did so by 70% of the popular vote. Unfortunately, those opposed had their say by making it one of the most difficult initiatives to use in the entire U.S., so few initiatives made it to ballot.
In 2019 though, one ballot initiative did obtain enough signatures to vote for legalizing medical marijuana. It then passed in 2020 with a 69% popular vote. Then what? Power to the people? Again, not quite. Due to snoozing or deliberate intent by lawmakers in Mississippi, they had neglected to update the state’s ballot initiative wording, which they should have done around the year 2001. The only update needed was to change the word “five” to the word “four” when numbers of congressional districts in Mississippi were reduced from 5 to 4, after the 2000 census.
As a consequence, six months after the vote, the state’s Supreme Court struck down not only the medical marijuana initiative but the entire ballot initiative itself. Both were ruled unconstitutional, on a technicality of a word. For years, the Mississippi legislature had been opposed to medical marijuana. When the first state to legalize it did so in 1996, alarm arose among state lawmakers who didn’t want it legalized medically in their state. Mississippi legislators certainly didn’t. Having the Court strike down the initiative only after 69% of citizens voted for it, certainly cast suspicion over the “sudden” awareness that the initiative process itself was unconstitutional. It had comfortably been unconstitutional for about 20 years.
In 2021 then, by snoozing or intent, MS lost both its medical marijuana initiative and the hard-won ballot initiative process itself. Medical marijuana recovered in 2022, not by the people’s choice, but by Reeves seizing the chance to have enacted a law as he wanted. One consequence is that unlike medical marijuana laws in other states, employers in Mississippi can outright fire anyone they know is using medical marijuana, even if used for a disability or with no impairment on job functioning. The ballot initiative did not recover though. Mississippi became the only state in the U.S. to have one and then take it away. It was the last to get one historically and the very first to take one completely away!
Did the Mississippi Republican Legislature rush to restore power to the people by putting a ballot initiative back in place. Not quite either. The years 2021 and 2022 went by with no action to restore this freedom. Now in 2023 the Legislature still doesn’t have an initiative in place, claiming they are still working on it. Meanwhile, speaking of snoozing Rip Van Winkles, Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson’s website still glowingly proclaims, “The Mississippi initiative law affords voters an avenue for addressing important constitutional issues which the State Legislature does not.” Watson’s excuse could be that he has concentrated instead on keeping “woke” Mississippi college students from easily registering to vote and making sure no one “sneakily" registers them, thus totally neglecting update of his web page.
Why is the Republican controlled Legislature dithering so much about a ballot initiative? It involves their twisted view of freedom. First, it wants to take away the freedom to address constitutional changes. The former initiative definitely allowed this. It also wants to ban the freedom to address state budget issues. This might eliminate any initiatives on the state’s absurd 7% grocery tax. And, of course, it wants to take away freedom to address reproductive rights, outlawing any initiatives on abortion, which might also scoop in any initiatives on contraceptive freedoms and freedom to seek fertility treatments. The irony for removing reproductive freedoms from initiatives is that the Mississippi inspired Dobb’s decision overturning abortion rights claimed this would allow the people of each state to decide abortion laws for themselves. In some states, rights have returned to the people, through initiatives. Apparently, this scares the state’s GOP though, to actually let people have the freedom to decide. If Mississippi is so overwhelmingly anti-abortion, what is the Legislature’s fear? It is obviously freedom in the hands of the people, which they don't trust.
Other attacks include one Republican legislator who pronounced, “We don’t have direct democracy for the people in the United States,” meaning clearly that she and other Republicans don’t want any either! Apparently ballot initiatives are too much freedom for them to tolerate. The Legislature even wants to give itself the right to amend or even veto any ballot initiative before it can even go to ballot! It also aims to more than double the number of signatures required to even get an initiative to ballot, 240,000 instead of 107,000! Legislator John Polk-R, calls ballot initiatives “dangerous” because in his opinion when people had freedom they voted for medical marijuana, so what else might they do! This exposes the legislative fear that the people might seek a vote on recreational marijuana use, now allowed in 21 states. Angela Hill-R summed it all up by calling the freedom of ballot initiatives “mob rule.”
Why also would Republicans deny freedom to address the State Constitution? Mississippi’s constitution has allowed antiquated oppressive laws to live on and on, particularly regarding voting, but in other arenas as well. Mississippi is the only state without an equal pay law for women. Jim Crow voting laws held on into the new millennium, favoring white voters over blacks. Mississippi was the only state not allowing any voting adjustments during the pandemic, disfavoring vulnerable populations. It is the only state requiring two distinct notarizations to vote absentee. It still imposes a permanent lifetime ban on voting by felons, after serving their time. Only a very few states still do this, but in Mississippi it makes an estimated 10% of the population permanently ineligible to vote, a law initially enacted to keep blacks from voting.
Sen. Barbara Blackmon-D, commenting on the ballot initiative said, “We ought to be able to trust people, our constituents, to have the ability to think for themselves, and that they have a brain.” The GOP in Mississippi doesn’t agree. They think people are brainless and need their guidance to know what freedoms they should be allowed to have. Their constricted view of freedom pertains not just to laws they enact on their own. It also pertains to the one pathway people might have to actually enact laws which they want to vote on directly, after taking great effort to gather signatures. Republicans claim “socialist” and “woke” Democrats want to be your Big Brother. The reality is that “fascist” and sleep walking Republicans instead want to be your Big Daddy and treat citizens like immature children who can’t handle freedom.
— Beverly E. Johnson, Kosciusko
