[algore]

According to the Mississippi Constitution, “The signatures of the qualified electors from any congressional district shall not exceed one-fifth (1/5) of the total number of signatures required to qualify an initiative petition for placement upon the ballot.” However, since 2001 redistricting, Mississippi only has four US House Districts. While this seems to cap signatures at 4/5 of the required amount, a 2009 attorney general’s opinion argued that signatures should be distributed among the five districts in existence when initiative and referendum processes were established in 1992.

[algore]

Now that I think about this, it would still have been nearly impossible to get exactly the same amount of valid signatures from each congressional dist even when they had 5

I have heard the state of Wa has similar initiative rules that allow the court to invalidate any citizen initiative at will

[Svartalfiar]

According to the Mississippi Constitution, “The signatures of the qualified electors from any congressional district shall not exceed one-fifth (1/5) of the total number of signatures required to qualify an initiative petition for placement upon the ballot.” However, since 2001 redistricting, Mississippi only has four US House Districts. .

Yea, that certainly is worded to not allow any citizen initiatives now. Even so, that was a stupid methodology back then - you would need to have an exactly equal amount of signatures from each district. If it was 10M, 10M, 10M, 10M, and 10,001, then that would be invalid as that last district exceeds the 1/5 cap. If it was worded as a minimum (each district must be at least 1/5 the minimum total signatures required), that would make more sense. For the current problem and in general.
Heck, that wording means that even if all five districts were equal, but they all exceeded the minimum needed by 10%, that would be an invalid referendum...


While this seems to cap signatures at 4/5 of the required amount, a 2009 attorney general’s opinion argued that signatures should be distributed among the five districts in existence when initiative and referendum processes were established in 1992

While this is how I phrased it in my first post, your actual text doesn't support this. Those 5 districts no longer actually exists - there's just geographical boundaries where they used to be. "From each Congressional district" can't be defined as any past districting, that can only really be legally read as the current setup. Or you open all sorts of issues with ANYTHING that depends on Congressional districts - people will pick and choose any past configuration to support what they currently want to do, whichever best helps them. Obviously not doable.