Adopted
AMENDMENT NO 2 PROPOSED TO
House Bill No. 195
BY: Representative Beckett
AMEND after line 70 by inserting the following:
" SECTION 3. Section 23-15-300, Mississippi Code of 1972, is amended as follows:
23-15-300. (1) Any candidate for any municipal, county or county district office shall be a resident of the municipality, county, county district or other territory that he or she seeks to represent in such office for two (2) years immediately preceding the day of election. Notwithstanding the foregoing two-year residency requirement for holding a municipal office, a candidate seeking to represent a ward need only be a resident of the municipality for two (2) years prior to the day of the election, but he or she need only be a resident of the ward he or she seeks to represent at the time of qualification of office. The provisions of this section shall not apply to any municipality with less than one thousand (1,000) residents according to the latest federal decennial census.
(2) A candidate shall prove in his or her qualifying information that he or she meets the applicable residency requirement or provide absolute proof, subject to no contingencies, that he or she will meet the residency requirement on or before the date of the election at which the candidate could be elected to office. The appropriate election official or executive committee, whichever is applicable, with whom a candidate files qualifying information shall review and determine whether the candidate meets the applicable residency requirement according to the procedures in Section 23-15-299. The appropriate election commission shall review and determine whether a candidate required to file qualifying information with it meets the applicable residency requirement according to the procedures in Section 23-15-359.
(3) If the qualifications for an elected office include a specific residency requirement, the residency requirement in this section shall not apply.
(4) This section shall apply to elections held from and after January 1, 2020."
AMEND further by renumbering the succeeding section accordingly.
AMEND further the title to conform.