Senate stands in way of initiative

For the third straight year, restoring the initiative process in Mississippi appears dead, thanks to resistance in the state Senate.

Although technically senators have until April 2 to keep the proposal alive, that's not expected to happen because the Senate appears to want a process on paper but not one that is ever going to adopt or change any laws.

The House has somewhat different ideas. Like the Senate, it wants to take any vote on abortion off the table. But in other aspects, it is willing to come closer than the Senate to restoring the power that citizens had before the state Supreme Court invalidated the initiative process on a technicality in 2021.

Both chambers want to raise the number of signatures required to get a proposal onto the ballot, but the Senate threshold would be the more onerous, about double what it was under the previous process. Should a bill clear that hurdle, the Senate also wants to make it much tougher for the proposal to win at the ballot box, requiring two-thirds of the total votes cast.

If you didn't know better, you might think from the Senate's stance that Mississippi was overrun with ballot initiatives when "people power" was in effect. That was hardly the case. In 30 years, only seven proposals garnered enough signatures to get on the ballot, and only three of those received enough votes to pass.

What the Senate obviously fears is giving up any of its power. It doesn't like the possibility of citizens ever bypassing it, but it knows that the majority of citizens want the option. So what it's trying to do is create an initiative process that exists only in theory but never in practice.

If that's the best the Senate is willing to do, better that the proposal die until lawmakers are willing to created reasonable guidelines that give a citizen-led petition drive a chance of success.