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 — 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 “could open the floodgates” 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 – Reeves, Watson and Fitch – 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.
“We fully support encouraging voter registration and promoting an engaged electorate,” Fitch said in a news release. “But 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.”
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 “directs 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.”
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.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1946
Dec. 23, 1946
University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: Ray Higgins: PERS needs both extra cash and benefit changes for future employees
Mississippi Today’s Bobby Harrison talks with Ray Higgins, executive director of the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System, about proposed changes in pension benefits for future employees and what is needed to protect the system for current employees and retirees. Higgins also stresses the importance of the massive system to the Mississippi economy.
READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
‘Bringing mental health into the spaces where moms already are’: UMMC program takes off
A program aimed at increasing access to mental health services for mothers has taken off at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The program, called CHAMP4Moms, is an extension of an existing program called CHAMP – which stands for Child Access to Mental Health and Psychiatry. The goal is to make it easier for moms to reach mental health resources during a phase when some may need it the most and have the least time.
CHAMP4Moms offers a direct phone line that health providers can call if they are caring for a pregnant woman or new mother they believe may have unaddressed mental health issues. On the line, health providers can speak directly to a reproductive psychiatrist who can guide them on how to screen, diagnose and treat mothers. That means that moms don’t have to go out of their way to find a psychiatrist, and health care providers who don’t have extensive training in psychiatry can still help these women.
“Basically, we’re trying to bring mental health into the spaces where moms already are,” explained Calandrea Taylor, the program manager. “Because of the low workforce that we have in the state, it’s a lot to try to fill the state with mental health providers. But what we do is bring the mental health practice to you and where mothers are. And we’re hoping that that reduces stigma.”
Launched in 2023, the program has had a slow lift off, Taylor said. But the phone line is up and running, as the team continues to make additions to the program – including a website with resources that Taylor expects will go live next year.
To fill the role of medical director, UMMC brought in a California-based reproductive psychiatrist, Dr. Emily Dossett. Dossett, who grew up in Mississippi and still has family in the state, says it has been rewarding to come full circle and serve her home state – which suffers a dearth of mental health providers and has no reproductive psychiatrists.
“I love it. It’s really satisfying to take the experience I’ve been able to pull together over the past 20 years practicing medicine and then apply it to a place I love,” Dossett said. “I feel like I understand the people I work with, I relate to them, I like hearing where they’re from and being able to picture it … That piece of it has really been very much a joy.”
As medical director, Dossett is able to educate maternal health providers on mental health issues. But she’s also an affiliate professor at UMMC, which she says allows her to train up the next generation of psychiatrists on the importance of maternal and reproductive psychiatry – an often-overlooked aspect in the field.
If people think of reproductive mental health at all, they likely think of postpartum depression, Dossett said. But reproductive psychiatry is far more encompassing than just the postpartum time period – and includes many more conditions than just depression.
“Most reproductive psychiatrists work with pregnant and postpartum people, but there’s also work to be done around people who have issues connected to their menstrual cycle or perimenopause,” she explained. “… There’s depression, certainly. But we actually see more anxiety, which comes in lots of different forms – it can be panic disorder, general anxiety, OCD.”
Tackling mental health in this population doesn’t just improve people’s quality of life. It can be lifesaving – and has the potential to mitigate some of the state’s worst health metrics.
Mental health disorders are the leading cause of pregnancy-related death, which is defined by the Centers for Disease Control as any death up to a year postpartum that is caused by or worsened by pregnancy.
In Mississippi, 80% of pregnancy-related deaths between 2016 and 2020 were deemed preventable, according to the latest Mississippi Maternal Mortality Report.
Mississippi is not alone in this, Dossett said. Historically, mental health has not been taken seriously in the western world, for a number of reasons – including stigma and a somewhat arbitrary division between mind and body, Dossett explained.
“You see commercials on TV of happy pregnant ladies. You see magazines of celebrities and their baby bumps, and everybody is super happy. And so, if you don’t feel that way, there’s this tremendous amount of shame … But another part of it is medicine and the way that our health system is set up, it’s just classically divided between physical and mental health.”
Dossett encourages women to tell their doctor about any challenges they’re facing – even if they seem normal.
“There are a lot of people who have significant symptoms, but they think it’s normal,” Dossett said. “They don’t know that there’s a difference between the sort of normal adjustment that people have after having a baby – and it is a huge adjustment – and symptoms that get in the way of their ability to connect or bond with the baby, or their ability to eat or sleep, or take care of their other children or eventually go to work.”
She also encourages health care providers to develop a basic understanding of mental health issues and to ask patients questions about their mood, thoughts and feelings.
CHAMP4Moms is a resource Dossett hopes providers will take advantage of – but she also hopes they will shape and inform the program in its inaugural year.
“We’re available, we’re open for calls, we’re open for feedback and suggestions, we’re open for collaboration,” she said. “We want this to be something that can hopefully really move the needle on perinatal mental health and substance use in the state – and I think it can.”
Providers can call the CHAMP main line at 601-984-2080 for resources and referral options throughout the state.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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