The Mississippi legislature is at a standstill until the two contested races — one in the Mississippi House and the other in the Senate — are decided.

State Rep. Alex Monsour, R-Vicksburg, who represents District 54, is hopeful both will be resolved by early next week.

“We can’t set committees, can’t make committee assignments, don’t know who committee chairmen will be. It’s got us at a standstill,” Monsour said.

Incumbent Republican Melanie Sojourner of Natchez, who was defeated in a close election by Democrat Bob M. Dearing, also of Natchez, is challenging the outcome of the November 2015 election for the Mississippi Senate seat representing District 37.

Sojourner, who is a champion of the Mississippi tea party, has asked the Senate to overturn Dearing’s election.

Dearing, who held the seat for 32 years prior to being defeated by Sojourner in 2011, was certified the winner of the election by 64 votes. However, Sojourner has challenged Dearing’s election in the Senate.

A five-person committee — four Republicans and one Democrat — was appointed by the Senate leadership to hear the challenge, which includes Sojourner’s allegations that absentee ballots in Adams County were not property signed or secured and poll workers in Franklin County provided improper help to voters who did not qualify for assistance.

The five-person committee, which took testimony until near midnight on Thursday, will then make a recommendation to the full Mississippi Senate.

Senate District 37 represents all Franklin County and parts of Adams, Amite and Pike counties.

In the House, a tied race between Republican Mark Tullos of Raleigh and incumbent Democrat Blaine Eaton II of Taylorsville for the District 79 seat was decided by the drawing of straws, which is dictated as a way to resolve a tie election by state law. Eaton won the election based on drawing the “long straw.”

However, Tullos is challenging the outcome of the election. District 79 represents parts of Jasper and Smith Counties.

Monsour said he’s not certain what issues will move to the forefront in this year’s legislative session. However, he has submitted a bill that amends the sentence for those convicted of capital murder of a peace officer, which includes police officers, first responders and the like.

“My bill would change the option from life in prison or a death sentence to the death penalty,” Monsour said. “As for hot button issues, some may come up, and some may not. The first are being stokes on education funding, on the flag, and with all the talk about the lottery, that may come up. It may not come to pass, but we usually do have some hot button issue.”

State Sen. Briggs Hopson III, a Vicksburg Republican, said indeed the legislative session has gotten off to an unusual start.

“This is the first year in a new term and those always move a little slower. We have a lot of new people in each chamber and some adjusting to do,” Hopson said.

He said his biggest priority in this legislative session is to put forth distance learning legislation.

“I see one of our biggest problems in education is the struggle to hire the best quality teachers. It’s a struggle particularly with upper level math and science teachers,” Hopson said. “I want to see if we can have an arrangement with the department of education to offer classes where we have a teacher in one location teaching the same class at the same time to four or five schools. We should have sufficient technology to allow that in place now.”

He said schools, particularly located in the more rural and poverty-stricken areas of the state struggle to get teacher to teach even the most basic classes.

“If we pool our resources, we can get some really good quality teachers to meet some of those needs for our kids,” Hopson said.

The state’s budget will be a particular challenge this session, he said.

“We will try to craft a good budget that meets the needs of the agencies, but it’s going to be difficult because revenues are down pretty significantly,” Hopson said.

As for hot button issues that may crop up this legislative session, he said he couldn’t predict.

“I do think we’ll have movement in a couple of areas, like election modifications or even form. We’ll likely have some discussion on DUI laws, just trying to clean up some things that would make it better. And we’ll likely debate DHS child custody issues, work on something to try to relieve some of the burden on DHS while making sure we have children being taken care of,” he said.

State Rep. Oscar Denton, a Democrat who represents District 55, did not return phone calls for comment before press time.