During the 2024 legislative session, Senate Elections chair, Jeremy England, proposed legislation that would allow Mississippians to vote up to 15 days before election day at their circuit clerk's office. The bill passed in his chamber, but was never taken up in the House. England says he's going to revive that effort in 2025 because the policy just makes sense in the fast paced society.
“Mississippians are hard working people and sometimes we work far away from where we live,” England said. “We go where our best jobs are and to have to try to vote between seven and seven on a Tuesday, it's not convenient.”
Multiple election commissioners from across the state attended the hearing, some driving six hours to be there. The general sentiment among those commissioners was that early voting is coming to Mississippi eventually, but lawmakers need to get it right. And that local governments shouldn't bear the cost of implementing early voting.
“Our Board of Supervisors already wants to know ‘how come we spent this much on the election?’” And then if you add another cost to it, ‘why we doing is, why we doing that?’” So I think the feasibility of it has a lot to be figured in on that,” Randle Hall, chairman of the Tippah County election commission, said.
After the hearing, England said he expects early voting to pay for itself, and even save money in some areas. In-person early voting is currently in place in 47 states, with Mississippi, Alabama and New Hampshire as the only remaining holdouts. England hopes that helps motivate lawmakers to make Mississippi the 48th state to put that process in place.
“I think anytime we can look at not being last in something, I think that's a motivation,” England said. “And shoot, if we can beat our sister state to the table on this one, I would be happy to see that happen,” England said.
