Mississippi Today
Latest lawsuit continues long trend of fighting efforts to improve Mississippi voter access
It should not be a surprise that the entire Mississippi Election Commission, made up of Gov. Tate Reeves, Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Secretary of State Michael Watson, have joined a lawsuit trying to stop federal agencies from working to improve access to voting.
After all, Mississippi politicians have a decades-long history of opposing federal efforts to improve voter access in Mississippi.
Most of the Jim Crow provisions of the state’s notorious 1890 Constitution designed to deny Black Mississippians access to the ballot were not struck down by Mississippi politicians, but by federal courts and the U.S. Congress.
In the modern era, Mississippi is one of only three states without some form of no-excuse early voting and one of seven that does not allow online voter registration. And to vote by mail with an excuse, a Mississippian must get two separate documents notarized.
In the 1990s, Mississippi was the last state to conform to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, known as “motor voter,” and did so with some Mississippi politicians kicking and screaming.
The motor voter act required states to allow eligible citizens to register to vote at drivers’ license bureaus and some other locations where public assistance was offered.
For a period after the act was passed by the U.S. government, local election officials in Mississippi were forced to maintain two voter rolls โ one for state elections where people who registered under motor voter could not vote, and another for federal elections where motor voter registrants could participate.
County circuit clerks and election commissioners who oversaw the elections said maintaining the two voter registration lists was a nightmare. Many of them urged the Legislature to change state law to conform to motor voter.
Then-Gov. Kirk Fordice opposed the change. He complained the law should have been named “welfare voter” instead of “motor voter.” He said allowing Mississippians to register to vote under motor voter โcould open the floodgatesโ allowing, gasp, just about anyone to vote.
A majority of the legislators supported changing the law, but for a period the change was blocked by Fordice and the chair of the House Elections Committee.
Fordice said with no evidence that legislators who supported motor voter had won election through fraud.
Finally, the U.S. Department of Justice ordered Mississippi to adopt motor voter. The Legislature passed it, but Fordice vetoed it, saying he would not approve it unless it included a voter identification provision.
The Senate could not garner the two-thirds majority to override Fordice’s veto.
Finally in 2000 under Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, motor voter was approved.
This year Mississippi election commissioners โ Reeves, Watson and Fitch โ are arguing the Joe Biden administration has exceeded its constitutional authority by instructing federal agencies to develop strategies to improve voter participation and work with states to make voter registration easier in some locations, like military recruitment offices.
โWe fully support encouraging voter registration and promoting an engaged electorate,โ Fitch said in a news release. โBut putting the full weight of the Oval Office behind an effort first developed by partisan activist groups and then hiding the agency activities from public scrutiny goes too far. The law does not allow it. Mississippi will not stand for it.โ
But Lisa Danetz, an adviser for the Brennan Center for Justice, a national nonprofit which promotes voter access, said the Biden executive order is not nefarious. She said it โdirects federal agencies to provide access to voter registration application opportunities and reliable voting information when eligible citizens are already interacting with the federal government. The order also aims to improve access in other ways, such as by requiring the government to examine obstacles to voting for people with disabilities.โ
Mississippi has been accused before of making it difficult for people with disabilities to vote. In 2023 a federal judge threw out a portion of a Mississippi law saying it could curtail the ability of Mississippians with disabilities to vote.
Yet again, Mississippi politicians are carrying on a long standing legacy of working to make it more difficult for Americans to vote. Mississippi politicians have believed for decades that the harder it is to cast a vote, the better it is for them.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Crooked Letter Sports Podcast
Podcast: New Orleans sports columnist and author Jeff Duncan joins the podcast to talk about his new Steve Gleason book and the new-look New Orleans Saints.
Jeff Duncan went from the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson on Saturday to Jerry World in Dallas on Sunday where he watched and wrote about the Saints’ total dismantling of the Dallas Cowboys. We talk about both events and also about what happened in high school and college football last weekend and what’s coming up this weekend.
Stream all episodes here.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1899
Sept. 18, 1899
Scott Joplin, known as โthe King of Ragtime,โ copyrighted the โMaple Leaf Rag,โ which became the first song to sell more than 1 million copies of sheet music. The popularity launched a sensation surrounding ragtime, which has been called America’s โfirst classical music.โย
Born near Texarkana, Texas, Joplin grew up in a musical family. He worked on the railroad with other family members until he was able to earn money as a musician, traveling across the South. He wound up playing at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, where he met fellow musician Otis Saunders, who encouraged him to write down the songs he had been making up to entertain audiences. In all, Joplin wrote dozens of ragtime songs.
After some success, he moved to New York City, hoping he could make a living while stretching the boundaries of music. He wrote a ragtime ballet and two operas, but success in these new forms eluded him. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in New York City in 1917.
More than six decades later, his music was rediscovered, initially by Joshua Rifkin, who recorded Joplin’s songs on a record, and then Gunther Schuller of the New England Conservatory, who performed four of the ragtime songs in concert: โMy faculty, many of whom had never even heard of Joplin, were saying things like, โMy gosh, he writes melodies like Schubert!’โ
Joplin’s music won over even more admirers through the 1973 movie, โThe Sting,โ which won an Oscar for the music. His song, โThe Entertainer,โ reached No. 3 on Billboard and was ranked No. 10 among โSongs of the Centuryโ list by the Recording Industry Association of America. His opera โTreemonishaโ was produced to wide acclaim, and he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his special contribution to American music.ย
โThe ragtime craze, the faddish thing, will obviously die down, but Joplin will have his position secure in American music history,โ Rifkin said. โHe is a treasurable composer.โ
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Insurance chief Chaney hopes Mississippiโs homeowner rates are stabilizing
Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney says he is hopeful that the homeowner insurance rates that have spiked in recent years are now beginning to stabilize.
Chaney said he is hopeful that legislation passed during the 2024 session that provides grants to help homeowners put more wind resistant roofs on their homes will help lower the cost of premiums. He said the Legislature placed $5 million in the program.
โWhile this will help launch the program, the Legislature will need to provide additional annual funding well above this amount so that the program can provide the necessary benefits to reach a significant number of policyholders across our state,โ Chaney said via email.
While homeowners’ insurance rates in Mississippi have risen significantly, the increases have been less than in many surrounding states, according to various studies.
Chaney said his agency, which regulates the insurance industry in Mississippi, has received requests for double digit increases.
โWe worked with companies to consider less than what their indicated need was โฆ We feel that rate pressures will begin to stabilize along with inflation. Some companies that requested rates over 15% last year are now seeing a much lesser need โ many are now in single digits,โ Chaney said.
Inflation and the frequency of severe weather causing insurance claims are the two primary reasons for the increases in the homeowners’ insurance rates, according to Chaney.
Earlier this year the U.S. Senate issued a report addressing the rising costs of homeowners insurance premiums. The Democratic majority cited weather associated with climate change as the primary reason for the increase. Republicans discounted climate change and blamed the increase on inflation.
According to data compiled by Insurance.com and updated this month, the average cost of a policy for a $300,000 home in Mississippi is $3,380 per year, which is $779 or 30% above the national average.
The cost in Mississippi, though, is lower than many other Southern states. For instance, the cost in Louisiana is 38% above the national average and 52% above the national average in Arkansas. Florida is 70% above the national average while Texas is 48%. Other Southern states — Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky — are below the national average.
Realtor Magazine in May cited a report from Insurify, a virtual insurance company, saying, โThe states with the highest home insurance costs are prone to severe weather events. Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi are vulnerable to hurricanes. Texas, Colorado and Nebraska face a growing wildfire risk. Nebraska, Texas and Kansas are at high risk for tornadoes, being located in an area nicknamed โTornado Alley.’โ
Chaney said there are two types of processes for how insurance companies get rate increases. He said Mississippi is โa prior approvalโ state where the companies must receive approval from the regulator before an increase can be enacted. Other states –file and use states โ allow the company to enact the increase before receiving approval.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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