This fall, Mississippi voters will have their chance to repeal a provision of the state's Jim Crow-era constitution that deliberately penalizes Black voters and the Democrats they support in elections for statewide office. However, the proposed change could end up replacing one major hurdle for Democratic candidates with another.
On Monday, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill placing an amendment on the November ballot that would change the way the state conducts elections by eliminating Mississippi's version of the Electoral College, a key feature of the state's 1890 constitution that proponents openly announced was enacted "to secure to the State of Mississippi 'white supremacy.'"
The provision in question requires candidates for statewide offices such as governor or attorney general to win not only a majority of the vote but also a majority of the state House's 122 districts. If no candidate surpasses both thresholds, the members of the House choose the winner, and there's nothing to stop them from picking the person who lost the popular vote.
After Republicans took control of the legislature in 2011, they redrew their own districts to guarantee they'd never lose their grip on power. They did so by making sure a majority of districts would be heavily white and, therefore, heavily Republican. As a result, they not only gerrymandered the state House, they gerrymandered every statewide election, too. The effect was so pronounced that in last year's race for governor, Democrat Jim Hood would likely have had to win by 15 points just to have a shot at carrying 62 House districts.
This proposed amendment would no longer require candidates for statewide office to carry a majority of the state House districts, but there's a big catch: The new law would mandate a general election runoff for any contests in which no candidate earns a majority of the vote.
Georgia has had a very similar runoff law on the books for years, and it's consistently hurt Democratic candidates. In 2008, most notably, Democrat Jim Martin trailed in the first round of Georgia's 2008 Senate race by just 3 points yet lost his runoff by 15. In 2018, Democrat John Barrow went from a 0.4% deficit in the November contest for secretary of state to a 3.8% defeat the next month—not nearly as dramatic as what happened to Martin a decade before, but still a move in the wrong direction.
In fact, no Georgia Democrat has ever won a statewide runoff since Republicans revived the practice in 2005, knowing that Black voters—who disproportionately favor Democrats—tend to turn out at lower rates whenever there's a second round of voting. There's little reason to think such runoffs would operate differently in Mississippi, so even if this new amendment passes, it may offer little in the way of progress.
And what if it doesn't? Last year, a group of Black voters challenged this mini-Electoral College in federal court on the grounds that it violated the Constitution’s guarantee of one person, one vote. While the judge who heard the case agreed, he put the suit on hold to give lawmakers time to correct the problem themselves. If they fail to, the judge said, he’d allow litigants to once more pursue their claims.
