Headline: Election year keeping legislators away from controversial issues

In this article, Bobby Harrison offers commentary on election year in Mississippi. He details how this has changed the aggressiveness and the efforts of the politicians. He starts by offering the statement that legislators normally deal with controversy during the second and third years of their terms, leaving the fourth year to deal with bills that will not stimulate controversy. He details the issues that they have been dealing with and then details how this year has deviated from other years in the term.

I was really interested in this article because I have started learning more about the voting process in Mississippi and other states. I sat down at lunch and we had a discussion. My friend Tori Gallegos, who is from Chicago, stated that when she worked at the polls, Illinois’ rulings were so light that she would often see the same people coming back to vote multiple times. At the other extreme, my friend Ashley Miles, who worked the polls in Brandon, MS, said that she had to turn people away from the polls because they had been “purged” from the system. 

The stark contrast between the two voting systems in which neither seemed correct has led me to be interested in elections and the weight that they carry. I really liked the way the article compared and contrasted non-election years with election years. He examines the stances on education and the removal of civil service protection for state employees. 

One thing that I wish the article had done more of was explain what civil service protections were. Maybe I should have known what it was, but I thought that it was something that a few people may not know. I also thought that it would be interesting for Harrison to go into what are some of the outcomes of having a non-controversial fourth term. For example, I know that they are hoping to get reelected, but is the result a “lame-duck” year or one that simply walks on eggshells laid by constituents? Finally, the only other thing that I didn’t really like in the article was the ending. The article ends, “And oh yeah, legalizing the growing of hemp, as the House has voted to do, also seems to be popular.” I thought that if the article should bring that up, then it would be better to also explain it to people who had not been following the legislation.