Friday, January 23, 2015

Mississippi Committee Reviewed Election Law Issues


Thanks to Richard Winger of Ballot Access News for this post.

The Mississippi Secretary of State’s office set up a Committee to Review the state’s election laws last year.  On January 16, 2015, the committee issued a 18-page report.  The committee has 50 members.

The Committee discussed three general topics: (Party) Primary Election Systems, Early Voting, and Online Voter Registration.

Committee Recommendations

(Party) Primary Election Systems

The committee stated "Typically, the state legislature or Constitution determines the
qualifications required of a candidate to be placed on the primary election ballot and Governmental entities typically pay for the costs associated with a primary election."

Readers of this blog know I disagree with the cost part.  Any system that does not allow tax paying voters to take part in a primary system, one that allows the voter to select candidates nor parties, should not have to pay for the running of such election process.

The committee looked at four major primary systems utilized in the United States: Closed Primary, Semi-Closed Primary, Open Primary, and Top-Two Primary.

23 voted in favor of a Louisiana-style system

The Report refers to the Louisiana system as a top-two primary. The authors of the Report mention that California also has a top-two primary, but the Report on page 11 says “A top-two primary election system would appear to operate as a general election with a runoff, rather than a primary election which narrows the list of candidates of a political party for a general election.”  This describes the Louisiana system.  The Report mentions that the members of the Committee were visited by Louisiana election officials, who briefed them on the Louisiana system.

A would like a version of this system.  First, this eliminates two elections with just a general election with all candidates and write-ins on one open ballot.  But I would then add Ranked-Choice voting (RCV), to determine a winner.  Under this type of system, party official elections would have to be on a separate ballot just for members of the party.

20 voted in favor of keeping Mississippi’s open primary with seven abstained

Currently, Mississippi election officials must provide separate locations for the Republican primary and the Democratic primary.  Mississippi has other qualified parties but they don’t actually have primaries because the state doesn’t print up primary ballots for any party unless at least two people from the same party file to run against each other, and that virtually never happens.

The members who voted in favor of keeping the open primary recommended consolidating the Democratic and Republican primaries into the same polling locations, to save money.

Early Voting

On the issue of whether to provide for early voting or “no-excuse absentee voting”, the committee voted in favor 36-3, with 11 abstentions in support for a period of two weeks prior to Election Day.

Online Voter Registration

On the issue of whether to provide for on-line voter registration, the committee favored that idea 32-6, with 12 abstentions.

CLICK HERE to down load the PDF report.











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