LDF Condemns Passage of Mississippi Elections Bill That Would Disenfranchise Millions

Last week, the Mississippi Legislature passed an elections bill that will likely block Black voters and voters who have changed their name from equal access to elections. The bill, called the Safeguard Honest Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, includes provisions that mirrors the federal SAVE America Act that the U.S. Senate considered this month.

The SHIELD Act will require Mississippi voters to provide a very limited list of documents to elections officials if the officials cannot verify citizenship through a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database. Essentially, this will function as a poll tax, forcing voters to take time to go and pay for additional costly documentation to access the polls. An estimated 647,000 Mississippi citizens don't have a last name that matches their birth certificate. And only 20% of the state population has a passport - the lowest state rate in the country.

Moreover, the DHS database the state of Mississippi would be using is known to have erroneously flagged thousands of eligible voters as potential noncitizens in the past, with no current or future safeguards planned to improve database performance. Furthermore, the new law would mandate voter roll purges that are also known to have disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters based on inaccurate database readouts.

These changes are set to go into effect on July 1.

"Legislation like the SHIELD Act that forces voters to purchase expensive documentation in order to access the polls is a poll tax - a Jim Crow-era tactic to deliberately disenfranchise Black voters and other voters of color that was outlawed with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965," said Demetria McCain, Legal Defense Fund Director of Policy. "And it's a blatant effort to sabotage our elections by targeting voters who have already faced historical discrimination at the ballot box. It is the Mississippi Legislature's responsibility to eradicate the remnants of Jim Crow, not enshrine them at the expense of Black voters."

To learn more about the risks of the DHS database, visit here.

To learn more about the dangers of the federal SAVE Act, which mirrors the Mississipppi SHIELD Act, visit here.

###

Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights legal organization. LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957, though it was founded under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall while he was at the NAACP. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) is a division of LDF that undertakes innovative research and houses LDF's archive. In all media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF (do not include NAACP) and refer to the Institute as LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute or TMI.