Mississippi Today

Buses, notaries and strolls to the polls: How Mississippi college students are overcoming the nation’s toughest barriers to the ballot box

Published

4 weeks ago

October 30, 2024

mississippitoday.org – Molly Minta – 2024-10-30 14:00:00

In 2016, Jarrius Adams’ absentee ballot never arrived at his apartment in Oxford, so the then-19-year-old at the University of Mississippi was left with one option to vote: Skip all his classes and drive four hours home to his polling place in Hattiesburg.

Faced with a similar situation, the reality is most college students would decide not to vote, said Adams, who now works with the nonprofit Mississippi Votes.

“For some students, it’s just as simple as eating three times a day now that you have no supervision,” he said. “To add voting for the first time?”

It can be hard to cast a ballot in Mississippi, where state voting laws consistently rank as among the strictest in the nation.

But for the state’s tens of thousands of college students — many of whom are voting for the first time while also trying to stay on top of homework, classes, chores and having a social life — the barriers to the ballot box faced by all Mississippi voters pose an even greater challenge.

Mississippi is one of just three states without early voting. This means college students who choose to vote in person most likely have just one day to get to the polls, which are not always on campus. According to a list provided by the Secretary of State’s office, three of the eight public universities in Mississippi lack an on-campus polling location for this election.

When college students turn 18 in Mississippi, they are not automatically registered to vote if they have a driver’s license, a law on the books in 23 other states. There’s no same-day voter registration, which voting experts say can pose an issue for college students whose addresses, and therefore precincts, change more often than other voters. And Mississippi doesn’t have online voter registration for new applicants.

Mississippi “pretty much has all the things that make it hard to vote,” said Jennifer McAndrew, the senior director of strategic communications for Tisch College at Tufts University, which houses the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement.

Nevertheless, colleges and students who have been working all semester long to encourage their peers to vote say that young Mississippians pursuing higher education are motivated to turn out this Election Day.

“Our young Mississippians are the future of our state,” Secretary of State Michael Watson, who has visited colleges across the state to talk to students about voting, said in a statement. “It is important for them to educate themselves not just on the voting process, but also the policies and issues affecting the state and nation..”

At Ole Miss this semester, the Center for Community Engagement has registered more students to vote before the deadline in an election year than it ever has before: About 350 students, according to William Teer, the program director for student leadership programs and financial well-being.

Now, it’s just a matter of getting these students to the polls.

The UM Voting Ambassadors registered students in front of the student union during National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 17, 2024. Credit: Courtesy the University of Mississippi

“Everyone hears about how young people and college students in particular don’t vote in huge numbers for whatever reason,” said Marshall Pendes, a senior math and economics major who serves as a voting ambassador at Ole Miss. “I get a chance as a student to try and change that.”

Pendes cited a study that Tufts’ National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement conducted of student voting at Ole Miss, which found that about 15,000 students — more than 75% of campus — were registered to vote during the last presidential election.

That’s in part because of the efforts of voting ambassadors like Pendes. In his four years at the university, Pendes estimated he’s helped register more than 600 students. He’s helped students complete the Mississippi Secretary of State’s paper registration application all across campus, at fraternities and sororities, before and after class, during student government meetings, in the Circle and at meetings for all kinds of political clubs.

But not so much on in the Grove.

“During games, people aren’t really interested in doing paperwork,” Pendes said.

The goal is to educate students on how, where and why it’s important to vote, Pendes said, whether that’s in-person in the county where they attend school or at home through an absentee ballot.

“One of the great things about voting as a college student is you have so many choices,” he said. “Every person’s situation is different.”

Even though college students qualify for an absentee ballot in Mississippi, students say it’s far more common for their peers to register to vote in their college’s county.

“It’s more common for students to register on campus,” said Avantavis TyMon, an elementary education major at Alcorn State University who is also a Mississippi Votes’ Democracy in Action fellow. “It’s easier, and it’s more accessible … especially for the out-of-state students who don’t have cars.”

Alcorn State University is one of five public universities that will host on-campus precincts this year, along with Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi State University, the University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State University.

Though Delta State University does not have an on-campus voting location, there is a precinct across the street.

On Election Day, TyMon said he and other student leaders plan to canvass the dorms and ask students if they want to join a “stroll to the polls” event, which will involve a short walk to the on-campus precinct.

“It’s a little bit of a walk from where students live,” TyMon said, adding that in previous years, “we would meet up and all walk together.”

Mississippi’s absentee ballot process, which experts describe as onerous, may be another reason college students register to vote in-person in greater numbers.

“It is an unbelievable barrier for college students who don’t live in Mississippi or are voting absentee in Mississippi,” McAndrews said.

First, a voter must request an absentee ballot application from their circuit clerk’s office, according to a step-by-step guide from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office. Once they receive the application in the mail, the voter must have it witnessed by a notary, unless they are disabled. When a voter gets a ballot, the next step is finding another notary to watch the voter fill it out.

“You can do your taxes in one day,” Adams said. In Mississippi, “you cannot vote by mail in one day.”

Even some notaries think Mississippi’s absentee ballot law could be eased.

Bill Anderson, the vice president of government affairs at the National Notary Association, said that, of the handful of states that involve notaries in the process, Mississippi’s law is the strictest.

“You’d expect us to be supportive of states that allow or create a role for notaries in absentee ballots,” Anderson said. “We think this is a good idea. … These states, including Mississippi, want there to be a layer of security that is absent for voters voting absentee.”

Nonetheless, Anderson said he is hoping to work with Mississippi lawmakers next year on some issues he sees with what he called the “non-notarial functions” required by the state’s law.

For instance, Mississippi’s law requires notaries to sign the back of the envelope containing the voters’ ballot, something Anderson said is not expressly permitted by the notary laws of his home state in California. And Mississippi doesn’t oblige notaries to affix their seal to the envelope, which Anderson said other states require notaries to do.

“You can just imagine the poor voter,” Anderson said. “They’re out here, and the California notary is trying to find their state law and doesn’t want to get in trouble with the Secretary of State of California and says look … I’d love to do this for you, but I can’t.”

For his part, Pendes said he thinks students who want to vote absentee are motivated to find notaries, which can be relatively easy to do on a college campus.

“In my experience, people usually aren’t defeated by the notarization part,” he said.

At Mississippi State, the student government association and the Division of Student Affairs held an event called “Notary Day” last week. More than 70 students had their absentee ballots notarized, said Carson McFatridge, the student association president.

“When I think of a notary, I think of someone at the bank,” she said. “That can be a challenge just not knowing who has the capability to do that … so it was really, really cool to be able to see people like our dean of students volunteer an hour of his time to sit out there and help people.”

McAndrew said it’s important for colleges to make voting as a student as simple as possible, because even the perception that voting is complicated is itself a barrier.

“There’s so much out there about strict voter ID laws, it becomes this ghost barrier on top of the actual barrier,” McAndrew said.

“Anything we can do not only to reduce the complexity but to reduce the intimidation and anxiety factor is really important,” she added.

To that end, many professors have canceled classes to give students the day off to vote, and universities across the state are offering rides to the polls. At Ole Miss, buses will leave from the Walk of Champions and behind Ole Miss Bike Shop from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

This does more than help students without cars, Pendes said.

“The other thing to consider is that parking spaces on our campus are extremely hard to come by,” he said. “Do you want to move your car and lose your parking space to try to go vote? Because that isn’t necessarily something that’s always guaranteed to you, especially in commuter spaces.”

This semester, the Center for Community Engagement was also successful in finding a solution to an issue that has troubled student voters for years at Ole Miss, which is that residence halls and Greek Life houses are not considered acceptable mailing addresses at which to register.

Teer, the program director, said he worked with the Lafayette County Circuit Clerk’s office to establish the center as a mailing address for students who live on campus.

“We’ve had students coming in daily because they’ve received an email from us that their voter information cards had arrived,” Teer said.

Every Thursday, students at Alcorn State held a voter registration event at the campus chapel. TyMon also helped organize a voter registration block party that featured food trucks. These efforts resulted in more than 400 students registering to vote.

TyMon said he thinks student leaders have an important role to play in setting an example for their peers.

“When they see that we’re serious, they get serious,” he said.

That’s why A’Davion Bush, a sophomore political science major at Ole Miss, is going to drive home to Indianola not just to vote, but to volunteer at the polls. The Mississippi Votes’ Democracy in Action fellow said he’s going to post about his plan on social media so his friends who are still in high school will be inspired to vote when they turn 18.

“The older population is not doing anything to influence young people in my county,” he said.

McFatridge, the student body president at Mississippi State, said she recently registered a student to vote who had just become a U.S. citizen, which reminded her that while voting is a right, it’s also a privilege not had by everyone around the world.

Not voting in the U.S. is “kind of like looking a gift horse in the mouth,” McFatridge said.

“It’s a silly phrase,” she added, “but I truly believe that when given the opportunity to share your own thoughts and beliefs, I don’t know why you wouldn’t.”

An Arkansan, McFatridge had intended to vote early in her hometown of Searcy during fall break, but a family emergency prevented that.

It’s too late for her to order an absentee ballot, so now she’s driving home to vote before Election Day, 4.5 hours away.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1867

Published

24 hours ago

November 23, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-23 07:00:00

Nov. 23, 1867

Extract from the Reconstructed Constitution of the State of Louisiana, 1868. Credit: Library of Congress

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention, composed of 49 White delegates and 49 Black delegates, met in New Orleans. The new constitution became the first in the state’s history to include a bill of rights.

The document gave property rights to married women, funded public education without segregated schools, provided full citizenship for Black Americans, and eliminated the Black Codes of 1865 and property qualifications for officeholders.

The voters ratified the constitution months later. Despite the document, prejudice and corruption continued to reign in Louisiana, and when Reconstruction ended, the constitution was replaced with one that helped restore the rule of white supremacy.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Crystal Springs commercial painter says police damaged his eyesight

Published

2 days ago

November 22, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-11-22 12:21:00

CRYSTAL SPRINGS – Roger Horton has worked decades as a commercial painter, a skill he’s kept up with even with the challenge of having what his wife has called “one good eye.”

It hasn’t stopped him from being able to complete detailed paint jobs and create straight lines without the help of tape. But last year following a head injury, he and others said people have been pointing out a change in his work. Horton says the sight in his right eye is clouded, like he is looking underwater.

Affected vision, short term memory and periods of irritability – potential symptoms of concussion – followed after he was arrested last September. During an encounter with several police officers, Horton alleges more than one slammed his head into a cruiser and placed handcuffs on so tight that he started to bleed.

“(The officer) was kind of rough with me and all, and he takes my head and I said, ‘What’d I do?’” he recalled recently.

Horton ended up being convicted of two misdemeanor charges and has paid off the fines, but a year later he still has questions about the arrest and treatment by the police.

To date, he has not seen a doctor to evaluate his eye and check for vision or cognitive issues. Horton and his wife Rhonda don’t have a car, and transportation to doctor’s appointments in the Jackson area remains a challenge.

The Hortons have lived in Crystal Springs all their lives, and they have lived in the home the past five years that belonged to Rhonda’s mother.

More than a quarter of all people in Crystal Springs live below the poverty line, and that includes the couple. Rhonda Horton said it’s hard to make a living because there aren’t a lot of jobs, but they support themselves as painters.

That’s how they met Yvonne Florczak-Seeman, who lived in Illinois and purchased her first historical property in Crystal Springs in 2019. She splits her time between the two states.

“We painted that porch bar and the rest is history,” Rhonda Horton said, adding that they went on to complete detailed work on mantles, kitchen cabinets and a cigar room at Florczak-Seeman’s North Jackson Street residence.

Over the years, the couple built a relationship with Florczak-Seeman, who is seeking to open a women’s empowerment center called the Butterfly Garden, in the building next to city hall.

Yvonne Florczak-Seeman poses for a portrait at her business, The Butterfly Garden, in Crystal Springs, Miss., Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today

Florczak-Seeman has supported the couple numerous times, including helping them pay a late water bill and offering them work. She called them talented painters and hired them again to paint the interior of the future center, located at East Railroad Avenue.

In pieces, Rhonda Horton told Florczak-Seeman about her husband’s arrest and later the injuries she said he sustained from it. Florczak-Seeman had questions about the encounter and other potential injustices at play, so she offered to help.

“I just want them to pay for what they’ve done not just to him, but everybody,” Rhonda Horton said. “That’s what I want, justice.”

The Arrest

On Sept. 24, 2023, Horton was walking home from a friend’s house when officers approached him. One grabbed his arms to handcuff him, and he remembers them cutting his wrist and causing it to bleed.

Then, he said, a second officer slammed his head into the top of the police car, followed by another officer who slammed his head again. During the encounter, a bag of marijuana that Horton said he found fell out of his pocket onto the ground.

An officer put Horton in the back of the cruiser and took him to the station where Horton asked to speak to the police chief and call his wife. He said the police took his phone and clothes.

Afterward, he was taken to the Copiah County Detention Center in Gallman.

Police Chief Tony Hemphill disputed Horton’s allegation of mistreatment, saying he did not sustain any injuries that required hospitalization. He said Horton’s wrist was cut while he resisted arrest.

“He was not brutalized and targeted,” Hemphill said. “If he had just complied, he wouldn’t have had to come up there (to jail) that night.”

Two police reports from the night of the September 2023 arrest detail how officers had responded to a possible assault and were given the description of a white man. While in the area, they encountered Horton — the only person who fit that description.

Hemphill said a mother called police after her daughter told her she was assaulted. He said officers approached Horton on the street and tried to talk with him to rule him out as a suspect.

That’s when Horton began “fighting, pulling away, and kicking against (the officer’s) patrol vehicle, trying to run,” according to a police report from the night and Hemphill. Horton denies doing any of that.

The next day police took Horton from the county jail to the Crystal Springs police station. There, police informed him a teenage girl reported being assaulted. After learning about the assault allegation, Horton remembered feeling shocked and saying it couldn’t be true because he was not on the street where the alleged incident took place.

Hemphill confirmed the police investigated the assault allegation and found it not credible, meaning Horton wouldn’t face any related charges. He said he communicated this to Horton and his wife early on and since then, which the couple disputes.

As Horton was being arrested and detained, his wife grew worried because she had just spoken with him on the phone and expected him to arrive home shortly. Rhonda Horton and her adult son started calling Roger’s phone, each not getting an answer.

Then during one of the calls by her son, someone who did not identify himself answered Roger’s phone and said, ‘Your daddy’s dead’ and then hung up, Rhonda Horton said.

She was starting to assume the worst had happened. Rhonda Horton wouldn’t have confirmation her husband was alive until he called from the county jail in the early morning.

The next morning as she talked with the police chief, Rhonda Horton asked the chief about who answered the phone and told her son that Roger was dead. The chief told her the person who answered must have been from the county.

Hemphill later told Mississippi Today that he did not know about the call and that type of behavior by his staff “is not going to be tolerated.” Similarly, Copiah County Sheriff Byron Swilley said he had not heard about it and could not say whether a member of his department made the comment to Rhonda and Roger Horton’s son.

A Sept. 25, 2023, citation signed by Hemphill, shared with Mississippi Today, summoned Roger Horton to municipal court for the misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana and resisting arrest and directed him not to have contact with the alleged victim in the assault case. No contact orders are typically for cases such as domestic violence and sexual assault and they are set by a judge.

LaKiedra Kangar, who works in municipal court services, said the no contact order was put in place because of the assault allegation. She confirmed Horton was not charged with the offense following the police department’s investigation of the allegation.

Weeks passed. Roger Horton went to court for the misdemeanor charges, to which he pleaded guilty. Felony assault charges were not part of the hearing. Municipal Court Judge Matthew Kitchens ordered Roger to pay over $900 in fines for the misdemeanors.

Horton was able to pay for some of the fine through at least 10 hours worth of court-ordered community service, which he said involved painting buildings for the city.

Months later after learning about Horton’s arrest and how he said the police treated him, Florczak-Seeman said she wanted to know more. Horton didn’t have access to his arrest documents, so she accompanied him and his wife to the police department to ask for them.

The first visit, Horton asked but did not receive the arrest report. Florczak-Seeman asked if he had a fine for any of the charges, which police said Horton did even after completing some community service hours. Florczak-Seeman paid for the remaining balance and had him work for her for two days to pay that off.

This year, they went to the police department a second time so Horton could ask for his arrest paperwork. An officer told him he didn’t need it and that the rape allegation had been investigated and found not to be credible, Horton told Mississippi Today.

Florczak-Seeman asked why Horton couldn’t receive the report. She said Hemphill asked if she was Horton’s attorney, and Florczak-Seeman clarified she was his representative.

The chief left for a few minutes and returned with two pieces of paper and handed them to Horton. Hemphill told Mississippi Today he did not recall whether he was the one who handed the report to Horton.

Florczak-Seeman took the document from Horton and began to read it as they stood in the lobby. She said she was horrified to see the name of the alleged, underage victim and her address in the report.

Hemphill said the victim’s personal information should have been restricted and not doing so was an oversight.

After reading the report, Florczak-Seeman went down the street to the mayor’s office at city hall to explain what happened, and how she believed the mayor had grounds to fire the police chief because he provided that document to Roger with the alleged victim’s information.

Crystal Springs Mayor Sally Garland Credit: Crystal Springs website

Mayor Sally Garland confirmed she had a conversation with Florczak-Seeman about the police chief’s employment.

She said she reviews all complaints about city officials, and Garland said she goes to the department head to get a better understanding of the situation. If she determines there are potential grounds for termination, a hearing would be scheduled with the Board of Aldermen, and the group would vote on that decision.

Garland did not find grounds for termination, and Hemphill remains police chief.

A Strange Visit

The Hortons and Florczak-Seeman hadn’t given much thought about the 2023 arrest, until weeks ago when a teenaged girl suddenly showed up in Florczak-Seeman’s yard.

At the end of September at the North Jackson Street home, Florczak-Seeman heard screaming and found the teenage girl who came onto her property. She asked what was wrong, and the teenager said she was chased by a dog, which Florczak-Seeman and Rhonda Horton did not see.

The teenager asked for a soda, and Rhonda Horton went inside to get one. Florczak-Seeman asked where the teenager lived, and she gave an answer that Florczak-Seeman said conflicted with what two girls who were standing nearby on the public sidewalk said she told them.

Then Florczak-Seeman asked the teenager’s name and recognized it as the name of the alleged victim on Horton’s arrest record. Immediately, Florczak-Seeman said she turned to Horton and told him to stay back, and she told the teenager to get off her property, which she did.

At the moment, they were not able to verify whether the teenager was the alleged victim from the report. Neither the Hortons nor Florczak-Seeman had seen her before, and they only knew her name from the arrest report.

“That didn’t make sense at all,” Rhonda Horton told Mississippi Today.

Florczak-Seeman called 911 to report the situation and ask for police to come, which they did not. Hemphill told Mississippi Today a dispatcher informed him about the call with Florczak-Seeman, including details with the teenage girl and how she wanted to report the girl for trespassing.

Florczak-Seeman is one of the people who have noticed a difference in Horton’s vision. It’s clear when comparing the detailed and clean paint job Roger completed at her Jackson Street property in 2019 and the center where he painted last year.

During an interview at the center in October, Florczak-Seeman pointed to the ceiling and noted spots that Horton did not paint. She remembers telling him about them and realized that he couldn’t see them.

“The spots on my ceiling are still not painted, and they’re not painted as a reminder of the injustices that happened in this situation and why I got involved,” Florczak-Seeman said.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Job opening: Jackson Reporter

Published

2 days ago

November 22, 2024

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Mississippi Today – 2024-11-22 15:00:00

Mississippi Today, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom focused on investigative and accountability journalism, is building a dedicated team of reporters to provide in-depth coverage of Jackson, Mississippi.

As the state’s largest and capital city, Jackson matters greatly to us and all Mississippians. Launched in 2016 as the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom focused on Mississippi government and policy, Mississippi Today is focusing our lens beyond the statehouse and to the city of Jackson, serving our readers with the watchdog reporting they’ve come to expect from Mississippi Today. Our newsroom, with a proven record of providing impactful government accountability, aims to serve the city more directly with this team.

Our Jackson team will focus on sharp investigative reporting, watchdog accountability journalism and meaningful cultural storytelling. We aim to both elevate the voices of those working for positive change in the community while offering a balanced perspective on the city’s obstacles and triumphs. Our goal is to deliver impactful, honest journalism that will inform, inspire and empower Jackson’s citizens.

The team will be led by Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Wolfe, an investigative reporter with a decade of experience covering Jackson.

Roles and Responsibilities:

We are purposefully casting a wide net, hoping to connect with journalists of many different backgrounds who may be uniquely qualified to help us launch this team. If you’re a reporter with any of the following experience or attributes, this team may be for you.
Investigative reporting focused on uncovering systemic issues within government and politics. The bigger the impact of your reporting on government leaders or systems, the better.
Political reporting covering not only high-profile candidates for offices, but experience delving into issues and ideas that affect a community. We hope to delve deeply into a deep distrust in the city’s institutions.
Cultural reporting that highlights the often-overlooked success stories of citizens who are making a positive impact on their communities.
Strong understanding of Jackson (or similar large urban centers) and the unique challenges facing the city and its residents.
Commitment to the mission of balanced, impactful journalism that centers and respects the voice of the community.
Collaborative mindset and ability to work within a team-oriented newsroom.

The starting salary for this position is $58,000. Compensation is commensurate with experience level.

Expectations:

Work with a small team of journalists who are focused on social inequities and racial equality in our area.
Willingness to collaborate closely with a small team of like-minded journalists.
Get people to talk, find willing sources and protect them while telling sensitive and timely stories.
Build trust: Many people who have been impacted by inequities in Mississippi have been victims of predatory practices and forces. This will require empathy, patience and savvy.
Work with our Audience Team and data and visual journalists to create compelling story presentations.

Qualified candidates should have:

Experience working as a reporter in a newsroom.
Ability to work quickly, with accuracy and good news judgment.
Comfortability in digital or multimedia journalism spaces.
Ability to independently develop and cultivate sources.
Ability to use social media for research and to engage readers.

What you’ll get:

The opportunity to work alongside award-winning journalists and make significant contributions to Mississippi’s top nonprofit, nonpartisan digital news and information sources.
Highly competitive salary with medical insurance, and options for vision and dental insurance.
Use of appropriate technology and equipment.
29 days paid time off.
Up to 12 weeks of parental family leave, with return-to-work flexibility.
Simple IRA with 3 percent company matching. Group-term life insurance provided to employees ($15,000 policy).
Support for professional training and attending industry conferences.

How to Apply:

We’re committed to building an inclusive newsroom that represents the people and communities we serve. We especially encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply for this position, including women, people of color, LGBTQ people and people who are differently abled. Please apply here.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.