Americans and the world will fasten their eyes to the presidential election results on Nov. 3. But I wish we could go ahead and vote on that today; how could anyone not have made up their minds between Trump and Biden one way or the other by now? Everything from now to Election Day is just show — and a divisive one at that.
And the main state race on the ballot isn’t compelling. Hyde-Smith versus Espy for U.S. Senate? That’s a re-run; we know how it ends, no matter how much of other people’s money Espy wastes in what will be a losing effort.
But the most interesting features to me for voters to decide are the three referendums: medical marijuana, a new state flag and a change to how statewide offices are elected.
The Legislature does not like the voters in most cases to do an end-around it, so it makes it difficult to get referendums on the ballot, with huge and complicated signature requirements. Then the Legislature can essentially ensure a referendum will be defeated by putting its own version of the same issue on the ballot as a second question. The net result is to confuse the voters so much that the issue won’t pass.
That’s what’s been done with medical marijuana.
I’m not going to try to explain it because it would take up all the space of this column; but just know that because of that it’s extremely unlikely that the issue will fail, although I’ve been wrong many times before and surely will be in the future.
On the state flag, eager anticipation will be for what design the nine-member committee appointed by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, House Speaker Philip Gunn and Gov. Tate Reeves will choose. My gut tells me that a well-designed flag will pass, but an ugly one will not. The key is to trust an artist to come up with a quality piece rather than some bureaucrat in state government using Microsoft Paint.
The new design won’t be unveiled until September, so we’ll have to wait and see.
The final issue regards a requirement in the state constitution that a candidate for governor or other statewide office receive a majority of the votes in more than half of the 122 House districts. Usually when looking at election returns for state races we just look at the total number of voters, and most all of the time the candidate who gets the most overall votes also gets a majority in most of the House districts so it’s a moot point.
But if not, the outcome of the election would technically swing to the state House. In practice, the candidate with less of the overall votes in the past has agreed to step aside without it coming to that.
But in today’s partisan world, it’s unlikely that such gentlemanly behavior would exist. So the law needs to be changed. If the voters don’t do it Nov. 3, a federal judge likely will.
The referendum would replace that system, which is a sort of state version of the electoral college, with a runoff requirement if no one candidate gets more than 50% plus one vote.
So in a three-way race, it prevents an independent candidate who might pull 10% to 20% of the vote to sway the results. Think Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race handing the victory to Democrat Bill Clinton over Republican George Bush despite Clinton getting only 43% of the popular vote, or Charles Evers in the 1978 U.S. Senate race costing Democrat Maurice Dantin of Columbia the race against Republican Thad Cochran, who only got 45%. In both cases, Bush and Dantin probably would have won if there had been a runoff. So it’s the minority party that benefits from no runoff, while the majority party benefits from a runoff.
The referendum, if passed, would favor the majority party, in this case Republicans.
I’ll be interested to see what the voters decide about that and the other referendums on Nov. 3.
Charlie Smith is editor and publisher of The C-P. Reach him at (601) 736-2611 or via email at csmith@columbianprogress.com.
