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Oxford, Miss.—Since enacting voter ID laws, states from Texas to Wisconsin have spent thousands in taxpayer dollars embroiled in litigation. Not so for Mississippi.
A law journal article authored by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and set for publication in the Mississippi Law Journal of the University of Mississippi School of Law lays out the State’s voter ID success story.
Initiative 27, a ballot initiative paving the way for the current voter ID law, garnered 62 percent of the vote in Mississippi’s November 2011 General Election. After passage of the initiative, Secretary Hosemann traveled to Washington, D.C., to establish a working relationship with U.S. Department of Justice officials in order to avoid expensive litigation faced by other states.
Since voter ID in Mississippi became effective in June 2014, the State has not been sued related to its voter ID law and 99.9 percent of voters have appeared at the polls on election day with acceptable photo identification. More than 5,900 free Mississippi Voter ID cards have been issued by Circuit Clerks across the State.
Secretary Hosemann’s article, titled Not Our Grandfathers’ Mississippi Anymore: Implementing Mississippi’s Voter Identification Requirement details Justice Department meetings, focus groups, the regulatory process, polling data, voter communication and education, and other steps relevant to the State’s historic enactment of a constitutional voter ID law.
The article will be published in Volume 85, Number 6 of the Mississippi Law Journal this spring. The full text is now available on the Secretary of State’s website at https://www.sos.ms.gov/Elections-Voting/Documents/Voter%20ID%20Law%20Review%20Article_Revised%20041117.pdf.
