Sam R. Hall: These other states only think their election laws are restrictive
Jan. 19—Want to get depressed about the state of voting rights? Just read through all the election laws restricting elections that states passed last year.
Mind you, the depressing part is not the restrictions themselves. The depressing part is that in nearly every instance I found, the voting laws in these other states remain more open to and encouraging of the electorate than what we have in Mississippi.
For instance, Iowa cut their in-person early voting days by more than 30%, going from 29 days before an election to 20 days. This came four years after the Iowa Legislature cut the days from 40 to 29.
A colleague and I had a good laugh about the onerous condition of voting in Iowa. Let those voters mosey on down to Mississippi, where early voting might as well be a communist plot to overtake the government. It's called Election Day, not Election Week or Election 20 Days, dagnabbit!
In Arizona, the Legislature did away with the state's Permanent Early Voting List and changed it to an Active Early Voting List. Previously, voters could sign up for the PEVL and receive an absentee ballot in the mail each election. Under the new law, if a voter doesn't vote absentee at least once in two straight two-year election cycles — four years! — the voter will be removed from the list.
Here in Mississippi, nothing close to this exists. First off, unlike Arizona — along with 33 other states and the District of Columbia — we don't have no-excuse absentee voting. You have to meet specific criteria to vote absentee. And to get an absentee ballot, your best bet is to go to your county circuit clerk's office. You can call and ask for a ballot to be mailed, but you have to meet additional qualifications just for that.
Then there are several states that have apparently placed further restrictions on something called a "drop box." The best that I can tell, an election drop box is a place where you can drop off your early voting or absentee ballot without having to mail it in or going all the way to the county courthouse, which could be a ways out of the way for a lot of voters. Needless to say, we ain't got those newfangled "drop boxes" in the 'Sip.
To Mississippi's credit, we are already ahead of the game in one area that caused quite the dust-up in both Florida and Texas. We've allowed partisan poll watchers for years. Doesn't really do anything to expand voter participation, but it does help keep all those shenanigans in check!
My point is not to make light of efforts to restrict voter participation in other states. These laws were an overreaction to an election that didn't go the way the legislative majorities in those states wanted and inflamed by the preposterous lies of widespread voter fraud and stolen elections — which have been proven wrong time after time, mostly by investigations in the very states where these laws were passed.
No, my point is that Mississippi remains woefully behind the times when it comes to election laws designed to encourage participation, keep up with changing times and make it easier for voters to vote. And that's not going to change anytime soon.
SAM R. HALL is executive editor of the Daily Journal. Contact him at sam.hall@djournal.com or follow @samrhall on Twitter.
