It’s déjà vu all over again. In a 6-3 ruling this week, the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down the state’s constitutional ballot initiative process. This is not the first time MS’ highest court killed off direct democracy on a technicality, though the last time was a century ago.

In the second decade of the 20th century, the Mississippi legislature referred two direct democracy amendments to the people for adoption. In 1912, the referred measure was defeated at the polls, gaining only 35% of the popular vote. In 1914, though, Mississippi voters passed the measure with 69% of the vote, adding, at least nominally, the right of people to place statewide measures on the ballot. In 1922, the state’s Supreme Court voided the election. My article in the APSR with Dustin Fridkin looks at some of the factors that led to the legislative referral to the people of measures such as these.

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The 1914 legislative referral gave considerable power to the citizens, at least in theory. Initiative petitions, for either constitutional amendments or statutes, required valid signatures from 7,500 qualified voters to qualify a statewide measure for the ballot. The Governor could not veto an initiative if approved by the electorate. An initial legal challenge, Howie v. Brantley (1917), the state Supreme Court upheld the initiative process (as well as the popular referendum). Several years later, after a group circulated a ballot initiative to reduce the $40,000 annual salary of the State Revenue Agent, Stokes V. Robertson, Robertson sued in state court, arguing that the 1914 referred measure placed on the ballot by the legislature was invalid for a technical reason, specifically, that it did not allow voters to to “vote for or against each amendment separately.” In 1922, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed its earlier ruling and held that the state’s short-lived (and never actualized) initiative process was unconstitutional.

Bring on the Personhood Initiatives in 2012

After the huge defeat of the so-called “personhood” ballot initiative in Mississippi yesterday, combined with the defeats in Colorado the past midterm and general elections, there’s good reason for Democrats to be giddy about the possibility that  Personhood USA and its state affiliates might actually qualify similar extreme ballot measures in more states for the 2012 general election.

The Mississippi ballot measure would have given legal “personhood” status to undeveloped zygotes. There’s goes our 7 billion population count…

But seriously, Democrats might think about encouraging Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason to continue to blame the defeat of Proposition 26 Planned Parenthood and other progressive pro-choice organizations and elected officials. As Mason explained to the Huffington Post:

It’s not because the people are not pro-life. It’s because Planned Parenthood put a lot of misconceptions and lies in front of folks and created a lot of confusion.

Bryan Longworth, director of Personhood Florida, helpfully elaborated:

We’re not discouraged. It shows that the arguments that are being raised by Planned Parenthood, the scare tactics, and the second-guessing of Governor Haley Barbour did play a role.

Taking a page out of the RNC’s playbook when they helped to finance Proposition 209 in California in 1996, perhaps Democrats should actually encourage the qualification of personhood initiatives in Florida, Ohio, and other battleground states that permit direct democracy. Democratic candidates will have a clear wedge issue on which to run against Republicans. Wedge issues on the ballot have worked for Republicans in California and Colorado, as I write about in this 2001 article with Caroline Tolbert, “The Initiative to Party.”  Ballot measures can also have “educative effects” that help Democratic candidates, most notably, the minimum wage issues on the ballot in six states in 2006, as we analyze in our 2010 article, “Direct Democracy, Public Opinion, and Candidate Choice.”

As a scholar of direct democracy, the more initiatives on the ballot, the more to study.

Get Petitioning, Personhood USA!