
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told reporters on Thursday he would likely kill a bill that would give the secretary of state authority to purge voter rolls if officials suspect voters are non-U.S. citizens.
The bill, pushed by Secretary of State Michael Watson and passed by two Senate committees earlier this week, would allow state election officials to use state and federal databases — including from the FBI and ICE — to determine whether registered voters could be flagged as possible non-citizens. If individuals under scrutiny do not prove their citizenship within 30 days, they would be removed from voter rolls.
Watson told senators on Tuesday that he has “reason to believe there were actual registered voters who were here illegally” but could not offer specifics when pressed in committee meetings. But Hosemann, who previously served three terms as secretary of state, said in a press conference on Thursday that the problem Watson suggested is “virtually nonexistent.”
“It was more of a mental issue than a realistic issue,” Hosemann said. “The last thing someone who is here illegally wants to do is anything where they’re around policemen or precincts or other things. They avoid those things like the plague, and you can understand why… Quite frankly, it’s remote those people are here legally and would try to vote and commit a crime and get kicked out of the country.”
Hosemann continued: “I don’t know that will evolve eventually to being made into law in Mississippi.”
As secretary of state, Hosemann led the 2011 push to adopt and later implement a voter ID law in Mississippi. Proponents of voter ID argued requiring voters to present government-issued ID at the ballot box would curb election fraud and even though voter impersonation is exceedingly rare.
During his 2019 campaign for secretary of state, Watson highlighted what he called forms of “illegal” voting. During the campaign he proposed that the state conduct background checks on Mississippians when they register to vote “to confirm legal citizenship,” his campaign website said.
Watson’s bill does not specify what would constitute evidence that a particular voter might not be a citizen, and it does not clarify how election officials would have to alert suspected non-citizens that they needed to prove citizenship within 30 days.
The bill also states that driver’s licenses would not qualify as proof of citizenship, meaning voters would have to provide a birth certificate, passport or naturalization document to prove citizenship.
Opponents of the bill on Tuesday said the costs and timing of obtaining those two forms of identification could prevent U.S. citizens from meeting the 30-day threshold to prove citizenship.
Watson pushes bill that requires voters to prove citizenship or be purged from rolls
“This is the worst election bill I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, also a former assistant secretary of state, said on Tuesday. “It’s radical, it’s dangerous, and it’s un-American. Thousands and thousands of Mississippians who may not turn up in some database will lose their ability and right to vote over this bill.”
Proof of citizenship laws passed in other states have been swiftly challenged in federal court, and the courts have struck down several of them. States such as Florida and Texas have faced federal scrutiny over similar laws. Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee have passed similar laws.
Hosemann told reporters on Thursday that he “is not in favor of creating more litigation.”
“I am not putting a lot in my budget for creating federal lawsuits,” Hosemann said. “I’ve already got corrections, (Department of Human Services), and mental health already that we’re paying either the attorney general’s office or some outside counsel. We’d like to lower the amount of litigation.”
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.