FOCUS: 2022 Elections • Housing & Evictions • #MSWelfare Scandal • Jackson Water • Abortion • Race & Racism • Policing • Incarceration
The Mississippi NAACP and the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus announced support today for a ballot initiative that would require counties to offer at least 10 days of early, in-person voting.
My studies of newspaper archives and primary sources, and some good learning from Dr. Manning Marable at Columbia both widened my understanding from the racism in my native South to what really happened across the country and it, well, awakened me. It also made me want to come on back home and face down, and report, demons I needed to confront as a white Mississippian.
Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson says he may be a victim of “a hatchet job” after the Mississippi Free Press reported on his warnings against registering “uninformed” and “woke college students” to vote.
Last week, Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson made disparaging comments about college and university students and their capacity to exercise their constitutional right to vote. As Mississippi college professors and advocates for good government, we are disappointed by Secretary Watson’s statements and condemn them in no uncertain terms.
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.
After drawing national headlines for suggesting that registering “woke” and “uninformed” college students to vote would be bad for the nation, Mississippi’s top elections official is expressing some regret.
Mississippi’s top election official is worried that the nation will suffer if more “woke” and “uninformed” college students become registered voters. Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson made that remark in a televised interview while describing President Joe Biden’s March 6 executive order on “promoting access to voting.”
Driver’s license suspensions over unpaid fines have long triggered a devastating domino effect on poor Americans, costing them not only their ability to commute, but their jobs and livelihood. But the 35 states that continue to enforce such penalties could find new reasons to reconsider if a bill that U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, and Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, introduced today becomes law.
A new federal voting-rights bill would not overturn Mississippi’s photo-identification requirement for voting, despite claims U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith repeated yesterday as she denounced S. 1, the “For The People Act,” casting it as a “radical” intrusion on state’s powers.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
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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).