By Sid Salter
Columnist
Once again, the issue of whether Mississippi voters should have the very straightforward power
to bypass the Mississippi Legislature and propose changes to state statutes or the state
Constitution of 1890 is front and center.
This is a fight for lawmaking power that has ebbed and flowed through the Legislature and the
state courts for over a century. The Legislature adopted an earlier initiative process in 1914. The
state Supreme Court upheld it in 1917 but reversed that ruling five years later in another case.
The high court passed on a chance to undo that ruling in 1991.
From 1993 through 2021, Mississippians had the option of taking the power away from the
Legislature and changing the state constitution as they deemed appropriate when the Legislature
refused to act. The process was called initiative and referendum, and it was neither easy nor often
successful. The 1992 initiative process in Mississippi was designed by the Legislature to be
difficult for those citizens who wished to circumvent their power.
The Mississippi House passed House Concurrent Resolution 11 last week by a margin of 80 to
39. It’s the third attempt by the House to restore some form of ballot initiative power to the
voters, albeit a version that affords voters far less power than they had before the state Supreme
Court ruled in 2021 that the state’s 1992 ballot initiative law was rendered “unworkable and
inoperable” by the Legislature’s failure to amend the law to reflect the state’s loss of a
congressional district after the 2000 census.
That legal challenge came after the 2020 elections when Mississippi voters approved a voter
initiative authorizing a medical marijuana program outlined in Initiative 65 over the express
objections of the majority of legislative leaders.
Mississippi voters gave Initiative 65 a 73.7% approval while giving the legislative alternative
Initiative 65A only 26.3% of the vote. The pro-marijuana initiative outpolled Republican
incumbent President Donald Trump by some 20 percentage points with state voters — even
outpolling the state’s 72.98% decision to change the state flag.
State Supreme Court Justice Josiah Coleman wrote of the 1992 ballot initiative law in that
decision: “To work in today’s reality, it will need amending – something that lies beyond the
power of the Supreme Court.” The overall court decision was even more blunt: “The reduction in
Mississippi’s congressional representation renders it unworkable and inoperable on its face.”

But the fatal flaw in the 1992 ballot initiative law was well-known. Succinctly, legislative
inaction on amending the 1992 ballot initiative law killed direct democracy through ballot
initiative in this state, not the high court.
Oversight? Hardly. The Legislature grew increasingly worried about the 1992 ballot initiative
laws after the 2015 elections. Initiative 42 sought to put “adequate and efficient” public school
funding in the state constitution and empower the state’s chancery courts to enforce such
funding. It failed, but by a tight margin.
Initiative 42 not only made it to the ballot, but it also became the defining issue in the 2015
statewide elections. From start to finish, the pro-42 effort was a well-oiled, well-financed
political effort – one that provided a political roadmap to those who could put enough money and
organizational muscle into a ballot initiative to thwart the will of the legislative majority.
So, there wasn’t a lot of legislative weeping when the Supreme Court ruling on the medical
marijuana ballot initiative neutered the entire ballot initiative process. With a Medicaid
expansion initiative and an early voting initiative in the political bullpen both with the ability to
attract both money and organizational prowess, the lines were drawn.
There is sincere renewed sentiment in the Legislature in both houses to restore ballot initiative
rights to state voters. But exactly how those rights are restored – or restricted – is where the
process can derail.
HCR 11 offers a path to ballot initiatives that is again exceedingly difficult. It also contains new
restrictions on the content of initiatives that significantly limit the ability of state voters to have
an impact on substantive issues and protect legislative authority and power.
But given our state’s history on this question and the accompanying national review of ballot
initiative rights in other states – Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, South
Dakota and Utah – it’s not surprising that Mississippi is where we currently are on this issue.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.