State Rep. Alex Monsour, R-Vicksburg, passed a petition Tuesday to Vicksburg Lions Club members asking them to back efforts to require photo ID at Mississippi polling places.

A few signed, adding to about 50,000 signatures gathered statewide since the state Republican Party launched the petition effort in August. The petition seeks to add voter ID to the Constitution via a public referendum.

“If we leave it up to the people to do the voting, that’s the way it should be,” said Monsour, who is serving his first term.

The ballot initiative needs nearly 90,000 signatures by October in time for voters to vote on it during the 2010 congressional election cycle. Precisely 20 percent of the signatures must come from each of the five Mississippi five congressional districts that existed in 2000. Reapportionment after the last Census has since reduced the state’s representation in Congress to four districts.

Monsour’s speech highlighted his first appearance before the civic club since winning the District 54 seat in 2007. The seat representing mostly nonmunicipal Warren County and all of Sharkey and Issaquena counties was held by Dr. Chester Masterson for eight years before Masterson made an unsuccessful bid for the state Senate.

Besides talking up opposition to Democratic positions on the federal health care reform debate, Monsour turned up the heat on his own party. He cast the petition drive as a way to firm up economic bona fides of the ideological right in the Legislature, which took some heat in last year’s regular session for killing a voter ID bill.

“For some reason, we have a bunch of Republicans who have turned away from the conservative cause,” Monsour said, referring to none by name but reminding listeners to the failure of voter ID in the state Senate last year.

Early voting provisions tacked on to last year’s bill were cited by top state-level Republicans such as Senate Elections Committee Chairman Merle Flowers of Hernando and Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant as a reason to kill a voter ID bill during this year’s session. The current petition was started by Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, who has said he opposed that and other parts of last year’s bill such as reinstating voting rights for felons.

Seven bills were introduced in the House which would have required some type of identification at the polls, none of which survived committee. Monsour’s name did not appear as a co-sponsor on any of the bills.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com