GOP assisting voter ID petition
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The Daily Leader: Mississippi's chief Republican hit the road Monday, kicking off a statewide speaking tour to promote work on the voter ID ballot initiative with a stop in Brookhaven and several other Southwest Mississippi locations. Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Brad White said the effort to place a photographic voter ID initiative on the ballot in a future statewide election started by District 41 Sen. Joey Fillingane earlier this year now enjoys the full backing of the state Republican party. The party has set aside $150,000 to pay extra staff who will devote themselves solely to promoting the initiative and gathering the more than 90,000 signatures necessary to place the option on the ballot. "We didn't think it was possible to achieve this initiative without it being run like a campaign," White said Monday. "We've got an apparatus in all 82 counties, and we're utilizing our network of leadership, but we're also raising money to bring on extra staff to make sure this gets done."
White's and other Republicans' primary goal is to gather the necessary signatures - which must be verified by each county's circuit clerk - from the state's five former congressional districts by Oct. 9. If they meet the two-month deadline, the initiative could be placed before voters next November in the 2010 congressional election. If not, the initiative will have to wait. "It's a time-sensitive matter," White said. "Ideally, I'd like to get it on the ballot by 2010, but realistically, I don't know if that's possible. In the last four weeks, we've gathered 20,000-25,000 verified signatures. I think it's very possible if we got them organized right in two months. But to get them all in and verified and to the secretary of state's office, that may be cutting it close." Missing all the election deadlines would be just fine with state Democrats, who have fought and strove successfully to kill voter ID for years. Mississippi Democratic Party chairman Jamie Franks released a statement Monday saying Republicans are "losing touch" with Mississippians.
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