1 week Ago By Bill Cloutier
In all but 11 U.S. states, a majority vote in a referendum for a constitutional amendment is sufficient to carry the amendment to passage.
Americans got a close-up look at one such alternative – the supermajority requirement – in the sidebar stories about Tuesday’s historic election. In three states, constitutional amendments to legalize sale and use of recreational marijuana were on the ballots, while one state offered an amendment to legalize medicinal marijuana. Three states rejected the measures, but the medicinal-marijuana amendment passed in Nebraska.
The Florida amendment would have passed, but Florida is one of 11 states requiring a supermajority of 60%, or other provision specific to constitutional amendments. The amendment received strong majority support but fell 4% short of passage, thanks to the supermajority requirement. Abortion rights were on 10 state ballots.
In two “red” states, Nebraska and South Dakota, the pro-abortion cause fell short despite needing just 50%-plus-one support. Florida voters also rejected an amendment guaranteeing abortion rights, again by a few points short of 60%. Voters in the other seven states approved the amendments.
In Connecticut, which does not have a supermajority requirement for constitutional amendments, voters passed an absentee-ballots-for-all proposal, 56%-44%, on Tuesday – despite the fact state and local leaders still are struggling with the new early-voting law. If ever a new law needed the breathing space a supermajority law might have provided, it’s this one. However, “State legislators now have the constitutional authority to change the law to allow voters to request an absentee ballot without having to state a reason,” the Republican-American’s Paul Hughes reported Nov.
7. “This is expected to happen in the 2025 legislative session.” Voters who feel supermajorities are anti-democratic should keep in mind that the U.
S. Constitution contains several obstacles to revisions, culminating in a requirement that 75% of state legislatures or state ratifying conventions approve any amendment. The framers made this process difficult in large part because the Constitution defends individual rights.
State constitutions bear the same obligation. “Some people think the (supermajority) number should be higher; that we have made too many changes to our constitution,” Nova Southeastern University law professor Bob Jarvis told WPTV News in Palm Beach, Fla. “The good thing about the supermajority requirement is that if an amendment does pass, you know that it didn’t just squeak by.
” Moreover, the process is rather easily corrupted by massive infusions of campaign money. For example, “Trulieve, (Florida’s) largest medical-marijuana operator, ..
. donated the vast majority of the more than $150 million received by Smart & Safe Florida, the group running that pro-legalization campaign,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported Nov. 5.
There certainly is something to be said for baking some restraint into the process of tampering with the human-rights laws articulated in a state or federal constitution, as Floridians demonstrated by slowing – if not necessarily stopping – a pair of potentially dangerous changes to their founding document. Supporters of these measures certainly can bring them back for reconsideration, but they will have to embrace compromises that likely will render the changes more palatable to all..
