HC 3 Mississippi House · 2025 Regular Session

Constitution; amend to include human trafficking, sexual battery, child exploitation and commercial sexual activity as disenfranchising crimes.

This bill proposes amending Mississippi's Constitution to add human trafficking, sexual battery, child exploitation, and commercial sexual activity to the list of crimes that result in loss of voting rights. It simultaneously removes bribery, theft, obtaining money under false pretense, perjury, forgery, and bigamy from that list. The change would directly affect individuals convicted of these specific crimes, altering which offenses permanently prevent voting eligibility. The amendment would take effect July 1, 2025, and be submitted to voters in November 2026.
Bill status died 3 of 5 stages cleared
Introduction
Jan 2025
Committee Review
Jan 2025
House Passage
Feb 2025
Senate Passage
Governor
Introduced Jan 10, 2025 Last action Feb 13, 2025
Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

As Introduced → Current version · 3 edits
MINOR
The bill was amended from its original version to include a provision stating that the proposed constitutional amendment would take effect and be repealed on the same day (July 1, 2025), which appears to be an error or placeholder text. The core content regarding disenfranchisement changes remains the same, though the formatting and some text encoding issues were introduced in the committee substitute version.
Scope change
No substantive change to the scope of disenfranchisement provisions; the amendment still adds human trafficking, sexual battery, child exploitation, and commercial sexual activity to disenfranchising crimes while removing bribery, theft, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, and bigamy.
TIMELINE

Added a provision stating the amendment would take effect and be repealed on July 1, 2025, which contradicts the election date of November 2026 and appears to be an error.

TECHNICAL

Text formatting and encoding issues were introduced in the committee substitute version, including special characters and line breaks that differ from the original.

Removed page headers and footers from the original version in the committee substitute.

Floor votes

How they voted

This bill passed the House. No roll call record of that vote is available.
Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions
5
Key actions
1
Committee
1
Feb 4, 2025
Lower · Passed
Title Suff Adopted Comm Sub
lower
Jan 10, 2025
Committee
Referred To Constitution;Judiciary B
lower
1 primary · 1 co-sponsor

Sponsors