Magnolia Marketplace

Magnolia Marketplace just wrapped up a 10-minute conversation with Brad White, chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party.

Nothing is official yet, as the process of certifying signatures is ongoing, but White feels pretty confident enough registered voters have signed petitions in favor of a voter identification law that the issue will appear on the statewide ballot in 2011, giving Mississippians a chance to vote for or against it.

“I’m not ready to jump out and say we’ve got enough, but it looks like we’ve brought in a big enough cushion that we can get there even if the verification process drops some of the signatures,” White said.

Per state law, at least 18,355 signatures from each of the old five congressional districts have to be certified by the circuit clerks of each county in the districts. That would put the minimum number of signatures required for an initiative to make it onto the ballot at 91,673, or 12 percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. White said it’s possible the final tally from each of the congressional districts would exceed 20,000, pushing the total from all five above 100,000.

If the initiative does indeed have the requisite number of signatures, it would then head to the Legislature in the 2011 session, where upon its arrival two things could happen: Lawmakers could go ahead and adopt the initiative into law, or they could send it to the ballot for fall 2011.

The county committees of the State GOP, Tea-Party groups and other organizations have spent the past year rounding up signatures for the initiative. Magnolia Marketplace heard reports last fall of people circulating petitions at high school football games, and even witnessed some of the effort firsthand in the Grove.

“This will bring clean voter ID,” White said. “There will be no hangups like people being able to use their electricity bill as identification or anything like that. This initiative mandates that only government-issued ID (such as a driver’s license) is acceptable at the polling places. This is better than any legislative proposal that’s been brought up.”

The Mississippi GOP will hold a press conference Thursday, White said, to update the latest with the certification process.

Apologies for the extended neglect of the blog. With the Holidays switching up the schedule here at the MBJ, we’ve had to cram two work weeks into one. That’s not a complaint, because it means we’re getting a few days off to do the Christmas routines, watch bowl games, drink eggnog and watch more bowl games.

Big things happened in 2009. Some good, some not good, some pretty bad. We took a look back in this week’s edition. Next week, we’ll look forward with some predictions for 2010 from some of the state’s business and political experts. There’s a surprise or two in there. Look for it.

In that vein, some personal predictions from Magnolia Marketplace:

• The legislative session that starts in a couple weeks will be wild and woolly.

• And despite what each party’s leadership says now, the state’s budget for fiscal year 2011 will not be done by the end of March, though we’d love to be proven wrong.

• No state agency will be happy with its appropriation for FY2011.

• In fact, many agency heads will cry bloody murder.

• Gov. Haley Barbour’s proposal to merge the three HBCUs into one will get absolutely nowhere in the Legislature, but that’s not going out on much of a limb.

• The Congressional campaign between Republican State Sen. Alan Nunnelee and Travis Childers, the Democrat from Booneville who represents the First District, will be a humdinger, with the national committees from each party pouring lots of money into it.

• The tone of the campaign will be exceedingly nasty.

• Toyota will announce it is ready to move forward with the Blue Springs plant.

• By this time next year, we’ll have a much clearer picture of the gubernatorial candidates for 2011, particularly on the Democratic side.

• On Jan. 2, Jevan Snead will throw at least one interception in the Cotton Bowl.

• Magnolia Marketplace will hit the ceiling when he does.

To you and yours, Merry Christmas. We’ll see you Dec. 28.

If you’ve ever had a tailgate marred by exhaustion from lugging coolers and chairs through the Grove searching for one tent among thousands that look the same, Zach Jex is here to help.

Jex, a 28-year-old attorney in Natchez, launched www.gamedaymap.com last Friday, a Web site that pinpoints tailgates anywhere on the Ole Miss campus.

Jex, who earned an undergraduate degree and a J.D. from Ole Miss, created Gameday Map out of necessity.

“We drive four hours there and you only have a couple of hours to meet up with whatever friends from college and their parents,” Jex said. “You just don’t want to spend that much time looking for them.”

Tagging a tailgate on the site’s map application is free and easy. After a quick registration, drag the tent icon to your location on the map. Give a rundown of the crowd, what there is to eat and drink, and you have a Web page devoted to your tailgate. Anybody who needs to can point their browser to Gameday Map and find you.

“It’s a pretty simple process,” Jex said.

Jex started working on the site about two months ago. He used a freelance Web site to hook up with developers in India to build it.

Getting Gameday Map up and running before the start of football season was important, Jex said, due to interest in the site likely to decline sharply once the season ends.

Although he missed the first two home games against Southeastern Louisiana and Alabama, Jex believes five games’ worth of data will provide a good look at the site’s viability. Including Arkansas tomorrow, the Rebels still face Northern Arizona, Tennessee and LSU in Oxford.

The first round of numbers look promising. Four days after it launched, Gameday Map had 5,565 page views, with each visitor flipping through an average of four pages. Thirty-seven tailgates had been tagged as of Friday morning.

“Way beyond what I thought,” is how Jex described the initial response. “Only about 10 percent of people who have done it are people I know. So it’s not just my friends signing up.”

Like it does for the sanity of Ole Miss fans, this football season carries a lot of weight for Jex and his site. He has already approached the Mississippi Technology Alliance about setting him up with investors. If this season goes well, Jex hopes to raise enough capital to add other campuses. “We’d like to do the entire SEC and then move to every college that wants it,” he said.