From Jeff Singer at Daily Kos:
Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood is running for governor of Mississippi this year, and as we’ve noted before, a Jim Crow-era law means that Hood could lose even if he wins the most votes on Election Day. That’s because the state’s 1890 constitution requires gubernatorial candidates to win both a majority of the statewide vote and a majority of the 122 districts that make up the state House.
If no candidate wins both the popular vote and a majority of districts, the state House, where Republicans hold a wide 74-48 majority, then picks a winner from the top two finishers. Given the GOP’s shamelessness in embracing undemocratic outcomes, it’s unlikely they’d choose Hood, even if he wins the most votes. And thanks to Mississippi’s gerrymandered map, which the GOP drew up in 2012, we know it’ll be difficult for Hood to carry 62 House seats. But just how difficult?
To answer that, we can look to the results of Mississippi’s 2015 statewide contests broken down by state House district, which the state has calculated. Because of serious insufficiencies in the data available from the state, Daily Kos Elections has not yet calculated the results of the 2016 presidential race by legislative district, and the state has not published results for the 2015 contests by state Senate district.
Thanks to Mississippi's 1890 Jim Crow constitution, Jim Hood (D) may need to win the popular vote for governor by >10% this fall to avoid having the gerrymandered GOP state House seat his opponent instead. This law's origin was racist & it should be challenged as unconstitutional https://t.co/dvMpsRwzNl
— Stephen Wolf (@PoliticsWolf) February 4, 2019
Read that full report at Daily Kos. A great overview of the history of Jim Crow laws is provided by who note that, “Jim Crow was a derisive slang term for a black man. It came to mean any state law passed in the South that established different rules for blacks and whites.” That article also notes some of the specific Jim Crow laws that were the law of the land for decades in many states:
By 1914, Texas had six entire towns in which blacks could not live. Mobile passed a Jim Crow curfew: Blacks could not leave their homes after 10 p.m. Signs marked “Whites Only” or “Colored” hung over doors, ticket windows, and drinking fountains. Georgia had black and white parks. Oklahoma had black and white phone booths. Prisons, hospitals, and orphanages were segregated as were schools and colleges. In North Carolina, black and white students had to use separate sets of textbooks. In Florida, the books couldn’t even be stored together.
What do you think about the Mississippi law in question? Add you comment below…
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