The state Senate will likely allow all proposals to restore voters’ right to circumvent the Legislature and place measures on a ballot to die during the lawmaking process without taking a final vote.
Senate Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Chairman David Parker, R-Olive Branch, recently allowed two Senate measures to restore the initiative process to die on key legislative deadlines, which only left him and the Republican-controlled Senate with a House plan to consider.
Parker technically has until April 2 to advance a House proposal to restore the initiative process out of the committee he leads, but he said he has no plans to take that measure up in committee or on the Senate floor.
“It’s not on life support anymore,” Parker said. “It’s dead. It doesn’t have the votes anymore in the Senate.”
The 52-member Senate by a narrow 26-21 vote Thursday approved a statutory plan that required 67% of voters to approve a potential ballot initiative that appeared on a statewide ballot. The measure was held on a procedural motion, which Parker allowed to stand by Monday’s deadline.
The DeSoto County Republican said the cold reception to his proposal was enough evidence that the GOP-controlled chamber did not have the required two-thirds votes needed to pass the House’s proposal that amended the state Constitution.
“Sometimes we have to look at the whole picture and decide when the fight can be engaged with, or if it’s time to move on to a different battle,” Parker said.
Similar measures have died in the Legislature after the state Supreme Court in 2021 shot down the ballot initiative process that Mississippi voters had for three decades.
The House passed a measure in January that required organizers to gather 166,000 signatures from across the state to place an issue on the ballot. It also prevented issues related to abortion from going on the ballot for consideration.
Rep. Fred Shanks, R-Brandon, was the lead House negotiator on restoring the ballot initiative, and he told Mississippi Today on Monday that Parker’s decision was “a little disheartening to hear.”
“This is the third year the House has tried to push the ballot initiative,” Shanks said. “We discussed it with Speaker (Jason) White back in November and made it our very first big agenda item in January.”
During the 30 years that the state had an initiative, only seven proposals made it to a statewide ballot: two initiatives for term limits, eminent domain, voter ID, a personhood amendment, medical marijuana and a measure forcing lawmakers to fund public education fully.
Of those seven, only eminent domain, voter ID and medical marijuana were approved by voters. The rest were rejected.
Parker said he’s open to examining the issue in future sessions, but conceded that he doesn’t think the vote to restore it will get to the needed two-thirds threshold unless about a dozen senators change their position on the issue.
“In the end, I don’t think this is ever going to be a unanimous vote,” Parker said.
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