Early this year, I praised Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s package of significant election reform proposals. At inception, those reform offerings were worthy of praise and passage.
But the legislative process had ground those proposals down. In recent days, Hosemann put out a press release celebrating the progress of his election reforms in the 2016 session, breathlessly claiming in a statement: “The Mississippi Senate took another step in passing historic election code legislation with bipartisan cooperation. Not in recent memory has any such massive election or voting legislation passed with unanimous support, truly remarkable.”
Hosemann engages in a bit of hyperbole in those words. Let’s review where we were on election reform in January and where we are now.
Hosemann worked with a bipartisan study group to bring forth a substantial revamp of Mississippi’s election laws. The proposed election law changes in great measure would have brought Mississippi elections into the modern era.
First, the proposed changes would have consolidated election crimes into one main section in the Mississippi Code and would bring penalties for violators into line with other felonies and misdemeanors under state law.
Second, the proposal provided for online voter registration for Mississippi residents with a valid Mississippi driver’s license or a state-issued identification card. In addition, the study group recommendations provided for “no excuse” early voting to allow registered voters to cast their ballots up to 21 days prior to an election at their respective county courthouses.
The election law changes would tighten financial disclosure requirements and transparency while putting a few teeth in the state’s disclosure requirement in the form of penalties for non-compliance.
Finally, the proposal would move the state’s presidential preference primary from the second Tuesday in March to the first Tuesday or “Super Tuesday” — which would increase the state’s relevance in presidential campaigns and bring us more in line with the rest of the South.
But the state Senate’s unanimous passage of some of Hosemann’s proposed reforms glaringly omitted online voter registration and early voting – making the remaining reform package decidedly less “historic” or “remarkable” than Hosemann claimed in his press release.
The prospects of early voting passing in the current Mississippi have always been poor. Republicans, particularly in the South, have been resistant to early voting and that resistance is decidedly partisan in much the same way that Democrats resisted voter identification for partisan reasons for so long.
Like voter ID, the number suggests that Republican fear of early voting is misplaced. In the 37 states where early voting is legal, Republicans have in large measure gained ground.
But in a society in which time and convenience is all but worshiped and demands for technology solutions are rapidly increasing – isn’t there an app for that?  –  the notion that younger voters will stop pressing for early voting and online voter registration is laughable.
Just as Democrats struggled for years to accept that their fears and resentment of voter ID didn’t really equal to impediments to voting, Republicans are going to have to come around to the notion that early voting and online voter registration are political boats that have already left the dock and are sailing.
There simply is no plausible evidence that early voting hurts the GOP and the argument that is increases expense for county clerks begs the question of whether the job of those clerks is to serve their constituents or protect their operating status quos.
Ultimately, the perception battle is real. As long as Mississippi’s Republican legislative majority perceives that early voting and online voter registration represents a danger, they will continue to fight it – again, just as Democrats battled voter ID.
But there’s simply not a lot of plausible evidence against the benefits of early voting and online voter registration that don’t ultimately come back around to partisan advantage or disadvantage.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him sidsalter@sidsalter.com)