With local and national elections less than a day away, various nonprofits throughout the Mississippi have been collaborating with one other to prepare voters for Tuesday.
Mississippi has a long history of voter suppression. Black would-be often faced intimidation, threats and violence before the successes of the Civil Rights Movement. Today, nonprofits strive to resume their predecessors’ work by encouraging voter participation and challenging laws that could disenfranchise voters.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, Disability Rights Mississippi and the Mississippi Center for Justice have workshops to teach residents what they need to do to participate in elections. Another organization, One Voice, helps inmates gain their voting rights back. Many have voter protection programs with staff on-call in case locals need help on election day.
Mississippi has some of the strictest voting laws in the country. Individuals who are convicted of certain crimes have their right to vote revoked for life. The state does not offer universal early voting, online voter registration or no-excuse absentee voting, making it harder for voters to cast ballots by requiring them to show up in person and at specific times. The laws especially present challenges for disabled persons, prisoners, low-income voters and minorities.
Advocating for Disabled Voters
In July, the State of Mississippi revised restrictions lawmakers placed on absentee voting assistance in 2023 after Disability Rights Mississippi, the League of Women Voters of Mississippi, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of Mississippi sued the state, saying the law disenfranchises people with disabilities.
“Without the injunction it would have gone into effect and voters with disabilities in some situations would not be able to vote,” SPLC Senior Staff Attorney Ahmed Soussi said. The court ruled Mississippians with disabilities should have the right to choose who assists them.
DRM is preparing disabled voters for this year’s elections. It will offer free rides and have a hotline that can connect people who have difficulty voting on Election Day with staff and attorneys. “If we find serious issues we can call the Secretary of State’s office or the election commission and get it resolved immediately,” Jane Walton Carroll, communications director of the organization, said. She emphasized the voters have personal challenges and should be able to make independent decisions for how to participate.
The DRM staff will visit polling locations in person on Election Day to make sure they are accessible. Carroll recalled going to a location in an old fire station in rural Mississippi that did not have ramps or accessible parking. Curbside polling or temporary ramps would have been helpful for voters with mobility issues, she added.
“Every step of the way something being inaccessible can be a barrier. Whether it is a rise in the curb, a door that’s too heavy or door frames that aren’t large enough,” Carroll said.
In September, DRM hosted the “Red, Rights, and Blues” outreach event targeting young voters at The ARK in Jackson, Miss. The Southern Shockers wheelchair team played against the Thundercats team. Organizers invited both Democratic and Republican candidates to participate.
Some Incarcerated Mississippians Can Vote, Others Disenfranchised
Mississippian prisoners, 60% of whom were Black in 2022, are banned for life from voting if they are convicted of certain disenfranchising crimes. White-supremacist state leaders added the disenfranchisement law to the state’s constitution in 1890, and it remains in place today despite recent attempts to challenge it in court. Lawmakers have argued that the law violates the U.S. Constitution because it arbitrarily deprives Americans of the right to vote and because it discriminates against voters of color.
The state’s list of disenfranchising crimes include voter fraud, murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy, armed robbery, extortion, felony bad check, felony shoplifting, larceny, receiving stolen property, robbery, timber larceny, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, statutory rape, carjacking, or larceny under lease or rental agreement.
But many incarcerated residents whose crimes are not on the list may still be able to vote while incarcerated.
“A lot of people in Mississippi don’t know about the list of crimes. They think that if they have been convicted of a felony they cannot vote, which is not true,” One Voice Mississippi Program Manager Monica McInnis said.
One Voice is an organization that has long worked to help prisoners regain the right to vote. It recently submitted 60 applications to the state’s government on behalf of prisoners and the State restored about a quarter of their voting rights this past spring, McInnis said. The nonprofit also hosts community workshops inside and outside of prison. It builds relationships with local jails and then college interns and volunteers visit to speak with prisoners about their voting rights.
The organization will have a voter-protection program similar to DRM. It has an in-house call command center that consists of 11 stations with phones and computers with volunteers prepared to respond to voter concerns. McInnis said prisoners often call days leading up to an election to ask questions about their voting rights.
McInnis said the program helps “in case anything happens in the communities like police setting up roadblocks or people turned away because they don’t have the correct ID.”
“Many don’t have voter IDs. Those are issues that hinder our marginalized communities in the state of Mississippi,” McInnis added.
Organizations Aim to Protect Immigrants’ Voting Rights
In 2019, the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, with the help of the Mississippi Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters of Mississippi, sued the State over a 1924 law that required naturalized citizens to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. In response to the concerns raised in the complaint, the Legislature passed and Gov. Tate Reeves signed a new bill into law in 2022 that makes it less likely that naturalized citizens will be removed from the voting rolls.
A federal judge dismissed the case at the request of both the plaintiffs and the defendant, citing the change to the state law.
“Having gone through the naturalization process and pledged their allegiance to the nation, naturalized citizens deserve better than to be targeted for unequal treatment,” Ezra Rosenberg of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said in a statement in June 2022. “Their patriotism deserves to be honored, not punished. The addition of this new safeguard will help prevent naturalized citizens from being erroneously blocked from registering to vote through no fault of their own.”
There is no shortage of lawsuits by nonprofits to protect voter rights. “Last year we brought a case on behalf of Mississippi Votes to keep the polls open longer in Hinds County after we were getting many reports of ballot shortages,” MCJ Director of Advocacy and Policy Harya Tarekegn said.
Hinds County has a majority Black population and is a focus for the nonprofits in preparation for this year’s election, though local officials say they have taken steps to avoid a repeat of the 2023 shortages. Other obstacles voters have experienced including long lines and last-minute changes in polling locations.
MCJ is working to teach voters about voter ID, how to fill ballots out correctly and how to use voting machines. Most importantly, they want to make sure there are enough ballots for voters.
“Get to the polls and just cast a ballot. I say that every year,” McInnis said.
Read more coverage of this year’s elections cycle at our Election Zone 2024 page.
