Mississippi State Senate (click here)
| Party | As of July 2023 | |
|---|---|---|
| Democratic Party | 15 | |
| Republican Party | 36 | |
| Other | 1 | |
| Vacancies | 0 | |
| Total | 52 | |
Senate Bill 2358 (click here)
Ballot harvesting ban
Lawsuit filed by Disability Rights Mississippi, (click here) the League of Women Voters of Mississippi, a voter and two individuals who provide voter assistance challenging Senate Bill 2358, a recently enacted law that “restricts voters with disabilities from having a person of their choice assist them in submitting their completed” mail-in ballots. Specifically, S.B. 2358 stipulates that only election officials, postal workers, family members, household members or caregivers can assist voters with disabilities in returning their completed mail-in ballots and imposes criminal penalties and fines on those who violate the law. Prior to the enactment of S.B. 2358, anyone of a voter’s choice — including social workers, voting organizations and other trusted individuals — could assist voters with disabilities in returning their completed mail-in ballots.
The plaintiffs allege that the challenged law — which makes it harder for voters to cast their ballot and “also risks disenfranchising entirely blind, disabled, or low-literacy voters” — violates Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 208 of the VRA guarantees that “[a]ny voter who requires assistance to vote by reason of blindness, disability, or inability to read or write may be given assistance by a person of the voter’s choice’” so long as the assistor is not the “the voter’s employer or agent of that employer or officer or agent of the voter’s union.”...
By Ashley Lopez
A U.S. District Court in Mississippi (click here) temporarily blocked a voting law in the state Tuesday that was set to go into effect July 1. The law, known as Senate Bill 2358, creates new restrictions for who can assist someone while voting by mail.
Voting rights and disability rights advocates, who filed the lawsuit, argue Mississippi's law violates a federal protection that allows a voter to choose who helps them cast a ballot.
In his order striking down the law, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate wrote, "voting polls are expected to extend outstretched hands of welcome and provide unfettered access to conscientious citizens anxious to enjoy 'participatory democracy'- whether those citizens be among the vulnerable and the disabled."
SB 2358, which was signed into law earlier this year, set new limits on who can collect and transmit a ballot that was mailed to someone else. In Mississippi, the state's absentee-by-mail voting program is for limited groups of voters — people out of town on Election Day, people 65 or older and people with a temporary or permanent physical disability....
