(AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
- On deadline day, the Mississippi Senate has a chance to correct obvious defects in our election law to ensure safer, more secure elections.
Forget the Republican spat over early voting for a minute. There are other election bills in the Mississippi Legislature that absolutely deserve to live through today’s deadline to move general bills — legislation that address real threats to our elections.
To call our election code a jumbled mess is an insult to jumbled messes the world over. Candidates and parties openly ignore legal requirements and state office holders either refuse, or don’t feel like they have the authority, to do anything about it. There’s a lot of finger pointing. Enforcement is non-existent.
In the last two weeks, we’ve seen, up close and personal, blatant violations of Mississippi campaign finance law by Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. Filed late. Tens of thousands of dollars missing. Incomplete entries with large, round dollar figures that raise considerable suspicion.
To compound the problem, the Jackson Municipal Clerk refused to make these reports public, requiring formal public records requests for documents that should be posted for the general public to see almost immediately upon filing.
In 2023, the Mississippi Democratic Party simply missed the deadline (by several hours) to turn in qualifying paperwork on a huge chunk of their candidates. Magnolia Tribune was the only outlet that covered the story, to my knowledge, and nothing happened because there is no penalty in the existing law.
These rules aren’t meaningless fluff. They are meant to ensure the transparency, fairness, and security of our elections.
There’s a bill in the Senate (SB 2650) that would make candidates, including municipal candidates, file online with the Secretary of State. These documents would be available for the general public in one location. It’s a no brainer. I’ve heard it said in opposition to this bill that some municipal candidates are not sophisticated enough to file a document online. Then by God, keep that person away from running anything, much less a city.
There’s another bill that clarifies enforcement of election violations (SB 2651). Reasonable minds can differ on the “who,” but someone in government needs to clearly be made responsible for enforcement so we can quit with the “that’s not my job” situation we have now.
Finally, kudos to the Mississippi House for passing a bill yesterday that at least creates a fine for a party not filing qualifying papers on time.
This stuff should not be difficult. It really shouldn’t.
