Pamela

Forget the Republican spat over early voting for a minute. (No, seriously). There are other election bills in the Mississippi Legislature that absolutely deserve to live through tomorrow’s deadline — bills that address real threats to our elections. To call our election code a jumbled mess is an insult to jumbled messes the world over. Candidates and parties openly ignore legal requirements and state office holders either refuse, or don’t feel like they have the authority, to do anything about it. There’s a lot of finger pointing. Enforcement is non-existent. In the last two weeks, we’ve seen, up close and personal, blatant violations of Mississippi campaign finance law by Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. Filed late. Tens of thousands of dollars missing. Incomplete entries that raise considerable suspicion. To compound the problem, the Jackson Municipal Clerk refused to make these reports public, requiring formal public records requests for documents that should be posted almost immediately. In 2023, the Mississippi Democratic Party simply missed the deadline (by several hours) to turn in qualifying paperwork on a huge chunk of their candidates. Magnolia Tribune was the only outlet that covered the story, to my knowledge, and nothing happened because there is no penalty in the existing law. There’s a bill in the Senate that would make candidates, including municipal candidates, file online with the Secretary of State. These documents would be available for the general public in one location. It’s a no brainer. I’ve heard it said in opposition to this bill that some municipal candidates are not sophisticated enough to file a document online. Then by God, keep that person away from running anything, much less a city. There’s another bill that consolidates enforcement power in the Secretary of State’s office. Reasonable minds can differ on the “who,” but someone in government needs to clearly be made responsible for enforcement so we can quit with the “that’s not my job” situation we have now. Finally, kudos to the House for passing a bill yesterday that at least creates a fine for a party not filing qualifying papers on time. This stuff should not be difficult. It really shouldn’t.