Voter reform bill headed to House

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March 3, 2008

Lauderdale County “tops in the state” on clean voting

By Jennifer Jacob The Meridian Star Mon Mar 03, 2008, 09:37 PM CST

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is on a mission.

After viewing a poll that showed 80 percent of Mississippians believed voter fraud had occurred in the last election, and after seeing that his own father, who had been dead six years, had recently "voted," Hosemann is pushing a bill to put a stop to voter fraud in Mississippi.

The voter reform legislation package has already passed the state Senate and is now on its way to the House.

The bill would cause several changes. First, "no-excuse voting" would be implemented. Voters who plan to be out of town on election day would be able to cast their vote at their circuit clerk's office up to 15 days before election day. The vote would not be counted until election day, but could not be changed once cast. This is in an effort to reduce voter fraud that occurs via absentee ballots, and would do away with the ability of an "agent" to pick up another person's absentee ballot.

Students, military, the elderly, the disabled, and others who traditionally vote by absentee ballot would still be able to vote that way, but folks who are just going out of town would have to vote early at the circuit clerk's office.

All Mississippi voters would also be required to re-register after certain time increments in an effort to remove improper names, such as

those of the deceased from the rolls. Casting a vote will count as a re-registration. Voters who do not vote or re-register over a three-year period will be sent a reminder to re-register via mail, and will then have two years to do so before having their names removed from the rolls.

Voter Authentication, a trend that is being picked up by more and more states in the U.S., is also included in the bill. If the bill is passed, voters will be required to show a driver's license or state-issued identification card at the polls before voting. Voter ID cards will be available free to anyone who does not have a driver's license or state ID.

In addition, the law, which requires certain felons to lose their right to vote, will be enforced under the bill, with the steps to remove felons' names from the rolls being taken as soon as a criminal is convicted. The bill will also make voter intimidation at the polls a felony.

"This is a real problem in Mississippi and it needs to be solved," Hosemann said in a telephone interview Monday. "Dead men are voting, people are being indicted for voter fraud. And there is some history here, of people being kept from voting in Mississippi. And we need to fix that."

But one part of Mississippi, which has not presented voter fraud problems, said Hosemann, is Lauderdale County, where he said Circuit Clerk Donna Jill Johnson, Election Commissioner Anne Watts, and the rest of the election commissioner's office have "done an exemplary job" keeping the rolls up to date, and have already implemented some of the changes, such as voter re-registration, proposed in the voter reform bill.

"Lauderdale County is a prototype for other counties" in clean, efficient elections, said Hosemann, and also sets a good example in the delivering of jury duty letters.

"Ninety percent of jury duty letters in Lauderdale County are delivered," said Hosemann. "Statewide, it's 48 percent." Since having fewer jury duty notifications reach their intended recipient means having to send out more of them, "(Donna Jill Johnson) has saved y'all untold dollars by just mailing to the right people."

When implementing changes in election law, "we would rely on how (Lauderdale County) did it and what (Lauderdale County) achieved."

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