Is our Constitution sacred?

How important, unique and set apart should our Constitution be?  

The term “sacred” has often been used in describing it. While that word often involves religious connotations, its meaning is broader. Merriam-Webster’s definition includes “entitled to reverence and respect” and “highly valued and important.” In that context, “sacred” may not be too grandiose a descriptive distinction for the revered document.

The question is a simple and important one to ponder: Should the North Dakota Constitution be considered a unique, highly valued, respected, important document — one which should not be easily or frequently changed and trifled with?

Most North Dakotans would likely say that it should. After all, it is the foundational document of our state, which sets forth its fundamental structure and governance.

Laws can and do change, every time the Legislature convenes (in our case, that’s every two years). They can also be changed by the voters, through the initiative and referendum process.

The Constitution, on the other hand, is a more stable, fundamental document which should contain broad, major structural issues, not minor details which belong in our statutes — the North Dakota Century Code. The Constitution should very seldom see changes and should certainly not be cluttered with trivial or detailed items.

…at least that’s the way it used to be.

Things have changed

In North Dakota, that has all changed in recent years, as we’ve previously written.

Some have seized upon our initiative and referendum process (a common thing in many states west of the Mississippi but a rarity in others), not only to make changes in laws favored by the people, as intended, but to cynically manipulate the process.

Special interests (many leaning heavily to the political left, in contrast to the vast majority of the people of North Dakota, as demonstrated by their voting practices) have discovered that they can get their way through such manipulation, while they’d have little chance of doing so through the Constitutional law making process — namely, electing neighbors to represent us and make laws through the legislative process, where hearings are held on each issue and details are carefully vetted.

Instead, they’ve discovered that they can disguise often distasteful ideas in sugar coated slogans or simplified rhetoric or catch phrases, through the initiative process. Call it wolves in sheep’s clothing or Trojan horses, you get the picture. 

North Dakotans are often horrified to later learn what’s been passed in a measure they voted for, simply because what they heard or read about it “sounded good” before they voted.

The chicanery has taken an even more sinister turn. The special interest groups have largely begun to ignore even changing laws through the initiative process, but to aim higher. The reason is simple — they fear that the Legislature will undo their mischief by passing a law to change a bad or deceptive law during the next Legislative session, even though a 2/3 majority of both House and Senate are required in order to do so.

To prevent your elected representatives from doing their job and having a say in what governs our state, as our founder intended, the special interest groups have, for several years now, attempted to enshrine even the most minor policies in the State Constitution, with an alarming degree of success.

They do so not because trivia or bad ideas belong there, but precisely to make it more difficult to alter or undo their deceptive perversity.

As we recently reported, just such an effort is underway this year. Although some in the Legislature recently felt it was better to pass a bad idea into law rather than risking it being enshrined in the Constitution, the Senate stopped that effort. Many believed that passing such a law would not stop the intent to clutter the Constitution with a measure which would put the taxpayers on the hook for a large, ongoing expense and they were right. That effort continues.

Adding insult to injury, the special interest groups frequently hire signature gatherers to procure the relatively few signatures necessary to get a proposed Constitutional amendment on the ballot. Those hired frequently reportedly mislead people as to what the proposed measures actually do and what they’re endorsing with their signature.

An even bolder power grab

So arrogant have these special interests become buoyed by some success, that they added a supremacy clause to one of their recent measures, holding it supreme over any other portion of the Constitution! Of course, few, if any, voters knew the measure did that when they voted on it and many question whether it’s even (ironically) constitutional.

Another measure includes language that forbids the Legislature from even proposing a change to the provision it created. The problem is that another long-standing section of the Constitution authorizes the Legislature to do exactly that — to send proposed Constitutional changes to the people for them to consider. That conflict will soon be decided by the courts.

What can be done?

How can the people of North Dakota ensure that they aren’t hoodwinked by reading only a sentence or two on the ballot about a proposal, which sounds good on the surface, but which might add 30 pages of questionable items to the Constitution, as one recent effort stopped only by the North Dakota Supreme Court would have done?

The Legislature once proposed an idea which previously governed how the North Dakota Constitution could be amended. It would have slowed the process and made it more thorough, but special interest groups shot it down, claiming that it was a “legislative power grab” — a false claim, since it gave final authority to the voters, not the Legislature.

Another idea suggested that initiated measures should be printed, in their entirety, on the ballot so that readers could read, in their voting both, the complete text of what they’re voting on, rather than a sentence or two attempting to describe a proposal, as is the current practice.

Of course, voters who aren’t certain they understand every detail of every ballot measure proposed, may adopt the old practice “when in doubt, vote no.”

The deception must stop!

Whatever the method chosen, it has become clear that unless special interests are stopped from pulling the wool over voters’ eyes by misleading them about the real impact of measures they propose, North Dakota, as we know it, may become a very different place in the near future… and those changes will not be good.

Only the voters of North Dakota and those they elect to represent them can stop the efforts to turn our Constitution into nothing but a special interest group’s wish list, rather than the sacred document that it’s been.