Mississippi 2025 Policy Priorities

Quick Facts:

• With no early voting period, Mississippi is an outlier among Southern states.
• 70% of voters in Georgia voted early in the 2024 election.
• Studies show noexcuse absentee voting increase voter engagement, with no benefit to any political party.

Mississippi — without an early voting period — is an outlier among Southern states, as Louisiana, Georgia and Florida all offer an early voting period. This barrier to voting impacts many Mississippians across the political spectrum, especially those who work long hours, those with disabilities and those who lack reliable transportation. By implementing statewide early voting, Mississippi can make voting more convenient for all Mississippians, as well as alleviating long lines on Election Day. Another option would be to implement no-excuse absentee voting. Through either one of these policies, Mississippi would make voting more accessible to all voters, thereby improving our democratic process and increasing voter participation.

Early voting proved to be a popular mechanism, across party lines, during the November 2024 election. Nearly one half of all voters in Louisiana and Florida and over 70% of voters in Georgia and North Carolina cast early ballots. While studies show no-excuse absentee voting procedures do increase voter engagement, they found no benefit to any political party over another in turnout or total vote share. It is working all over the nation, and it is past due for Mississippi to join other states in making voting more accessible for all people.

Recommendations

• Permit no-excuse absentee voting; allow for permanent vote-by-mail requests with prepaid postage for ballot returns.
• Authorize automatic and same-day voter registration.
• Create an equitable statewide early voting program that includes at least two Saturdays before a primary or general election.

Quick Facts

• Mississippi is the only state with a lifetime ban on voting for individuals convicted of felonies.
• 16% of Mississippi’s Black population is disenfranchised.
• 1 in 10 adults in Mississippi are barred from voting due to a past criminal conviction.
• Research shows that allowing formerly incarcerated people to vote lowers recidivism rates.

Under Mississippi’s Constitution, individuals convicted of certain felonies are prohibited from voting for life. After Florida restored the voting rights of felons in 2018, Mississippi remains the only state that has maintained this lifetime ban on voting. The origins of Mississippi’s constitutional disenfranchisement date back to Reconstruction following the Civil War and are deeply tainted with racial bias. Crimes that were perceived as being committed more often by Black people, such as burglary and theft, resulted in losing one’s voting rights, while violent crimes more likely to have been committed by whites, such as murder or rape, did not. These laws were explicitly designed to suppress the rights of Black voters. Today, a staggering 16% of Mississippi’s Black population is disenfranchised.

Overall, more than 230,000 Mississippians, or 1 in 10 adults in the state, are barred from voting due to a past criminal conviction. This policy undermines and creates barriers to reintegration into society for those who have completed their sentences. Voting allows individuals to make personal change and societal impact for their families and community. Ensuring people with prior convictions have access to participate fully in democracy is foundational to the rehabilitative process. Furthermore, research shows that allowing formerly incarcerated individuals to vote also lowers recidivism rates.

In August 2023, in response to a case brought by the SPLC and co-counsel — Hopkins v. Hosemann — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down Mississippi’s disenfranchisement scheme. In this historic decision, the appeals court found that the Mississippi law — which bars individuals convicted of certain crimes, some very minor, from voting in Mississippi for life — was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, in July 2024, over the objection of six judges, the full Fifth Circuit panel overturned that decision, declining to restore voting rights to permanently disenfranchised Mississippians. What’s more, the decision stated that Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement laws can only be changed by the state’s legislature.

Recommendations

• Address historical racial bias by removing legal barriers to enfranchisement.
• Approve legislation to revise the state Constitution — and adopt any necessary companion legislation — to enable the restoration of voting rights to individuals with past criminal convictions upon release from prison, regardless of outstanding fines, fees or restitution.

Quick Facts

• A Black child is suspended from school every 15 minutes in Mississippi.
• Black children are incarcerated at nearly four times the rate of non-Black children.
• It costs $155,125 a year to incarcerate a young person in Mississippi.

Mississippi students receive disparate discipline in school settings. Students with disabilities as well as Black and Brown children continue to confront disproportionately harsh discipline practices in Mississippi classrooms. Alarmingly, a Black child is suspended from school every 15 minutes in Mississippi.

Due to the lack of state guidance, many schools across the state enforce mandatory expulsion of students after their second incident of disruptive behavior. Additionally, there is no exception in the compulsory attendance law for absences related to a student’s disability. As a state with some of the highest school suspension and expulsion rates in the country, Mississippi has promoted a school-to-prison pipeline that contributes to the highest adult incarceration rate in the United States.

Incarceration is harmful to our youth and expensive to taxpayers. In recent years, Mississippi has incarcerated more and more children in juvenile facilities, while devoting fewer resources to community alternatives that could have a more positive impact and reduce state-spending overall. Children are our most valuable resource, but Mississippi is not investing in them. We suggest that Mississippi invest in an approach that points our youth toward success, not prisons. The SPLC’s Only Young Once: The Case for Mississippi’s Investment in Youth Decarceration report provides compelling data that underscores the need for a policy response that will address racial inequalities. For example, Black children are incarcerated at nearly four times the rate of non-Black children, and incarcerating a young person in Mississippi for one year ($155,125) is more expensive than the alternatives combined: the annual cost to educate a child in Mississippi public schools is $9,258; it costs $18,250 to fund community-based alternatives to incarceration; enrollment for Ole Miss and Mississippi State University is $41,210 annually. 

Additionally, Mississippi has yet to meaningfully reinvest in programs and community-based alternatives to incarceration such as additional resources for counseling, tutoring and substance abuse treatment and investing in school policies and programs that have a proven impact on youth. Furthermore, the failure of Mississippi to accept federal funding available to expand Medicaid eligibility exacerbates challenges faced by those who are struggling economically. Children who have access to health care and food are much less likely to be part of the school-to-prison pipeline.

Recommendations

• Raise the minimum age of youth adjudication and incarceration in the state from 10 years to at least 14 years.
• Make nonviolent offenses and low-level drug offenses non-jailable for youth. Make technical violations and status offenses non-jailable and nonarrestable for youth.
• Fund diversion programs for youths as an alternative to incarceration. Examples include community-based alternatives, school-based policies and programs that prioritize rehabilitation, counseling, tutoring, and drug use treatment services.
• Amend all public education laws to ensure they are compliant with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
• Prioritize compliance with IDEA and ensure students receive the special education services they are entitled to under the law.

Quick Facts

• 34 of Mississippi’s 74 rural hospitals are struggling financially; at risk of closure.
• “Medicaid unwinding” has led to the removal of nearly 100,000 people from the state’s insurance program.

A key factor in achieving a thriving society is the health of its people. In a state that is routinely last in health care outcomes, those disparities are often magnified for rural, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities in Mississippi. Eradicating poverty and achieving equity starts with improving access to health care.

Federal law has empowered Mississippi to expand access to health care to its poorest citizens since 2014. For over a decade, Mississippi’s lawmakers have failed to provide a pathway to utilize the available federal funding, and its residents have suffered unnecessarily. If Mississippi expanded Medicaid to cover those living at or below 138% of the federal poverty level, an estimated 125,000 individuals aged 19-64 would have health insurance immediately.

Mississippi is one of only 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid coverage to those falling into the health care access gap despite it being cost-effective to do so. Multiple studies show that additional tax revenue and cost savings for uninsured residents would more than cover the state’s outlay for Medicaid expansion that was not otherwise covered by federal dollars. According to a 2024 Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment report, at least 34 of Mississippi’s 74 rural hospitals are struggling financially and at risk of closure. Driving factors for the crisis are a combination of rising costs of providing care and expenses related to uninsured community members. Medicaid expansion would help ease the financial burden for the facilities which would then prevent a health care desert by keeping the hospital and its well-paying jobs in the community as well as supporting the local economy and schools generally.

Further exacerbating access to care is Mississippi’s destructive “Medicaid unwinding,” which has led to the removal of nearly 100,000 people from the state’s insurance program. Not only has the legislature failed to ensure residents have access to affordable, quality health care, but they have made statutory changes in recent years that make it more difficult for those Mississippians seeking gender-affirming care to receive the necessary treatment. Everyone deserves access to quality medical care, uninfringed by politics or rhetoric.

Recommendations

• The Legislature should authorize the expansion of Medicaid in a way that enables them to accept the federal funding available to do so.
• The Legislature should restore those Mississippians removed from the rolls during the inhumane “unwinding” procedures this summer.
• The Legislature should prioritize funding for rural health clinics and mental health services.
• Ensure individuals and families can make medical decisions in consultation with their health care provider; allow medical professionals to provide care in accordance with their professional best practices and nationally recognized standard of care.