Mississippians who don't vote within a two year period, according to Senate Bill 2588, will receive a notification in the mail to confirm or update their information. If they fail to do so, and don’t vote in four more years, their names will be removed from the rolls. Republican Senator Jeff Tate of Meridian, authored the bill.
“The rationale is to clean our voter rolls, make sure that we maintain good voter rolls. A lot of legislations out there dictates how much counties have to spend on elections based on their active voter roll. With inflating books were going to have more costs that go down to the counties,” said Tate.
Tate also says using this tactic will reduce fraud. Democratic Senator David Jordan of Greenwood took issue with Tate's statement.
“Don’t you think you would need some statistics to show where there’s a great deal of it going on” said Jordan. “Well what I think this will do, this will not be discriminatory just to certain areas. I would be the entire state” said Tate “But you don’t have any evidence there is voter fraud do you?” “It’s there I promise you,” said Tate. “Do you have any evidence?” said Jordan. “I don’t have it with me but I promise you it’s there.” said Tate.
Jordan urged the Senate to wait until they have the statistics to take up the issue. He added the bill could create a barrier for people of color to cast a ballot. Tate says people can vote by affidavit ballot if they go to the polls and their names aren’t on the rolls. But he says that option is only for those whose names are purged due to a mistake by the county election officials. The bill passed 36 to 16 mainly along party lines.
