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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) - Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander has assembled a panel of county clerks and other officials to help shape a policy allowing for early voting.

Missouri now lets voters cast absentee ballots only if they swear they cannot go to the polls on Election Day or meet other, limited criteria. But the state has no general provision for early voting, which Kander says could help ease long lines at the polls.

Kander's appointed commission will meet throughout February to study the merits of early voting and evaluate what he says would be the efficient, fair and secure way to allow the practice.

Besides county clerks, the panel also includes former state lawmakers, the mayor of Joplin, a county elections director and private citizens.

Missouri mental health officials are hoping Governor Nixon and state lawmakers will include the Fulton State Hospital in a proposed state bonding package.

The hospital is Missouri's only maximum and intermediate security psychiatric hospital and is the oldest public mental health facility west of the Mississippi River.

The Department of Mental Health is proposing a new 300 bed, high-security facility that would cost about $211 million.

Officials say current facilities are antiquated and a new building would save utility cots and make for a safer facility.

Fulton State Hospital is in Fulton, Missouri, about 100 miles west of St. Louis.

HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) - The people of Hattiesburg, Miss., are trying to assess the damage after a tornado tore through the city on Sunday.

It was part of a wave of severe storms that downed trees, damaged buildings and injured more than a dozen people.

The twister traveled down one of Hattiesburg's main streets and mangled homes, commercial buildings and structures on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi. Emergency officials say at least 10 people were injured in surrounding Forrest County and three were hurt to the west in Marion County, but they aren't aware of any deaths.

A Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman says it appears that a single tornado caused the damage in those two counties and Lamar County. Hundreds of homes are damaged in Forrest County, along with a couple dozen in the other two.

On the campus of the university, trees were snapped in half around the heavily damaged Alumni House where part of the roof was ripped away. The university says no one was hurt but that it was under a state of emergency, anyone away from campus should stay away until further notice.