NC Constitutional Amendments Proposals

Two Articles

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A Close Look at the Six Constitutional Amendments on Your Ballot

In North Carolina, the general public doesn’t get to put amendments on the ballot through ballot initiatives but the public does get to vote on proposed amendments.

Your ballot this November will include six proposed constitutional amendments.

More at the link. You must copy and paste this link for it to work.

https://medium.com/@Jeff_Jackson/a-close-look-at-the-six-constitutional-amendments-on-your-ballot-43a77714dbfc
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North Carolina Republicans Flip Out About Voters Knowing What They’re Voting On

GOP lawmakers are trying to strip a bipartisan panel of its power to write captions for constitutional amendments that will appear on the ballot this fall.

North Carolina lawmakers rushed back to the state capital with less than 24 hours notice last week because Republicans called for a special session to block voters from receiving more information about a wide range of proposed changes to the state constitution during this fall’s election.

The proposed changes to the constitution deal with a range of important subjects that can affect voter access to the polls and impact the trajectory of state courts. This includes adding a voter photo ID requirement and restricting the ability of the state’s Democratic governor to fill vacancies on state courts and appoint people to the state election board.

Current state law requires a bipartisan commission to write a short caption to appear on the ballot summarizing those amendments, but Republicans passed a bill during the July 23 emergency session that blocked those captions from appearing on the ballot. Gov Roy Cooper (D) vetoed the bill on Friday, but Republicans have a supermajority in the legislature and are expected to override it in a vote on Saturday.

The 3-person commission responsible for writing the captions, which are just a few words long, consists of the secretary of state, attorney general and the legislative services officer of the general assembly. Currently, Democrats outnumber Republicans on the panel 2-1. Republican legislators, who gave the commission power to write constitutional amendment captions in 2016, said the new law was needed because Democrats would write them to sway voters to vote the proposals down.

Deb Butler, a Democrat in the North Carolina General Assembly, said the move to block the captions represents a GOP attempt to ensure the amendment passed ahead of a midterm election in which they were wary of losing their supermajority. The constitutional amendments, as currently written on the ballot, will be confusing to voters, she said.

“We owe it to the voters to do the best we can to give them accurate and explanatory information. And we know that voters, and people in general, they don’t read laws every day,” Butler said in an interview. “They don’t understand the double negatives and the odd manner in which they’re constructed. A caption, when accurately and done with objectivity is critically helpful to the voter.”

More at the link.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/north-carolina-ballot-captions_us_5b60702be4b0b15aba9cf275
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Advised to vote "NO" on all of these.

♡lmsp