In the 1990s, Mississippi added a voter-initiatives process to their constitution, and since then has passed a number of initiatives. This includes an initiative passed last fall, approving a medical marijuana program for the state.
Their initiative process has an interesting requirement: in order to get on the ballot, signatures have to be gathered from 5 congressional districts. There’s just one problem. After the 2000 census, the state lost a congressional district because of their stagnant population, and now they only have 4 congressional districts.
And now, the state supreme court has ruled that the medical marijuana initiative is invalid, because it only got signatures from 4 districts, and thus should not have been put on the ballot. The legislature has tried seven times to update the language in the constitution covering initiatives, but has never succeeded, regardless of whether the legislature was controlled by Republicans or Democrats. So this is not a partisan issue.
Meanwhile, Mississippi will be one of the few states that does not have a medical program for loco weed. I guess they are loco enough as it is.
4 Comments
Sounds like someone is protecting their investment in the private prison industry.
Wow. Changing “5” to “each Mississippi” is that difficult?
Changing ‘5’ to ‘each’ would take an act of Congress!
The fine folks at electoral-vote.com give a simple reason that this hasn’t been fixed: The Republicans don’t want to fix it. Ballot initiatives give voters a a direct way to make their lives better, despite the actions of the Republican legislature and governor. Why should those folks want to give The People a functional end run? Just leave it broken!
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[…] Iron Knee at Political Irony watches unsuccessful efforts to get past a law requiring signatures in more congressional districts than the state actually has. […]