Mississippi Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann Mississippians to know that voters can obtain the necessary photo ID to cast a ballot free of charge.
A group of voters is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to allow them to intervene for a rehearing in Watson v. Butler and to reconsider its decision to strike down Initiative 65, the voter-approved medical marijuana law, and to revive the state’s ballot initiative law, which a 6-3 majority of justices nullified as part of its ruling.
Recently, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson said that the United States would suffer if more “woke” and “uninformed” college students are registered to vote under President Biden’s executive order on voting which, Watson claimed, included “automatic voter registration.” There are so many wrong things about this statement, it’s hard to know where to start, former Mississippi Gov. and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus writes.
On Election Day last November, many Mississippians waited for hours in line to cast their ballots at some precincts, requiring some to miss work or find babysitters for their children. Now, a north Mississippi lawmaker and a group of activists have a plan to make democracy more accessible and flexible.
A fear that he had already seen his family for the last time gripped Congressman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, as he sheltered in the U.S. House chamber while an angry, riotous mob pounded on the locked door, which security guards hurriedly blockading with furniture.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker, Mississippi’s senior Republican in the Senate, says he will oppose attempts by some in his party to overthrow American democracy and stop the elected incoming presidential administration from taking power.
The U.S. has held elections in worse times than now, but this year brings daunting challenges to voting. Here, academic experts describe five major threats to election 2020—and one shares tips to make sure your vote is counted anyway.
Unita Blackwell was one of the heroes who joined SNCC and brought the vote to Mississippi, courtesy of the Voting Rights Act. Its passage by Congress in 1965 was bought with the blood of martyrs and the untold suffering of thousands more.
Jacob Ray writes that the Civil Rights Movement and Voting Rights Act ended voter suppression in the forms of lynchings, bombings, cross burnings, “bubbles in a bar of soap” tests, literacy tests and “good character” tests, but other forms of suppression survived the federal laws and continue to thrive.
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The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).
