Given the important question that will appear on our ballots here on November 4th, I’ve had a few questions swirling in my head for the past few weeks. Here are some of them:
- Who pays for a Constitutional convention?
- How much does it cost?
- How long does one last?
- How do issues get debated at a ConCon?
- Do we still have to vote on the issues after they’re approved by the convention?
- What happens when direct initiative is approved?
- Why do we need legislators after direct initiative is approved?
- Can the legislature supercede a law passed by referendum?
- What’s to stop people from putting abortion to a popular vote?
- What’s to stop people from repealing Article 1, Section 8 of the State Constitution (the bill of rights, as it were)?
- How is this push for a Constitutional convention not driven by bigotry?
- Can one voter initiative repeal an earlier one?
- What will the point of a legislature be, if we can pass all laws?
- Is the legislature forced to fund all initiatives that pass?
- What if they can’t?
- What if a Constitutional Amendment violates another provision of the Constitution?
There are so many variables here. CT News Junkie has a nice piece touching on a few of these aspects, but that still leaves many unanswered questions.
For example, if a statute is passed establishing a three-strikes law, what’s to stop the legislature from passing a new statute declaring the previous statute void? And so on and so on in circles?
It seems to me that this call for a concon is driven solely by special interest groups that know they don’t have the votes in the legislature and want to to get their agenda approved.
The system works very well as it is. Why fix something that isn’t broken?
This is why I’ll be voting no. What about you?
I voted NO in my state. A yes vote could/would mean the end to my government pension…..amongst other things.
You pretty much hit it right on the head. California’s referendum system is what brought that state the joys of Prop 13 (the property tax cap). By gutting the tax base, that measure single handedly destroyed what was the best public education system in the nation, in less than one generation.
Oregon passed their notorious Measure 37 eminent domain “reform” law by referendum in 2004. It was basically a license for developers to extort their way out of any regulation by lodging billions of dollars in claims against state and local governments for “takings.” It would have destroyed the state’s entire regime of land use and environmental regulations, had they not woke up and passed the 2007 Measure 49 to rein it in.
At least in California, once a referendum is passed, the legislature can never do anything to negate it, whether it is a law or a constitutional amendment. And the most insane constitutional amendments go on the ballot year after year after year. It becomes a non-stop war of attrition where the lunatic fringe just keeps throwing out different permutations of the worst possible ideas over and over and over until they finally get lucky — then there is no way to get rid of them.
It’s sort of a race to the bottom in constitutional terms. Good times.