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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.
1. Right to Hunt and Fish
You can read the full amendment here.
Here’s what the language on your ballot will be:
Constitutional amendment protecting the right of the people to hunt, fish, and harvest wildlife.
No one ever got a straight answer on why this is necessary. When I asked in committee whether this was going to impact any existing state laws, regulations, or municipal ordinances, I was told, “Not that we know of.”
This amendment may, however, end up causing plenty of litigation from hunters and fishermen who feel that existing regulations impinge on their (new) constitutional right. The courts would be left to establish standards for what level of regulatory intrusion would constitute a constitutional violation.
2. Legislative Selection of Judicial Vacancies (i.e., majority party in the state legislature fills the judicial vacancies)
You can read the full amendment here.
Here’s what the language on your ballot will be
Constitutional amendment to implement a nonpartisan merit-based system that relies on professional qualifications instead of political influence when nominating Justices and judges to be selected to fill vacancies that occur between judicial elections.
This one is tricky — by design. It includes phrases that sound great like “merit-based” and “nonpartisan.”
Don’t be fooled. In essence, judicial vacancies (caused by retirement, death, etc.) will now be filled by the majority party in the General Assembly.
Right now, the governor fills judicial vacancies. It works that way because the governor is elected statewide and judicial vacancies occur all across the state.
Despite carving out roles for a nonpartisan commission and the governor, what’s really happening is that the General Assembly will now have almost total control of filling judicial vacancies. Here’s why.
The nonpartisan commission will likely be toothless. Its only function is to determine whether a nominee is “qualified” — a very low bar. That means the commission won’t serve as any kind of genuine filter. More to the point, it’s highly likely that any nominees recommended by the leadership of the General Assembly will be deemed “qualified.” In all likelihood, this commission is only being included so its inoffensive language can be featured on the ballot to help the majority party pull a bait-and-switch on the voters: advertise the amendment as “nonpartisan,” then reap the partisan rewards of newfound power.
There’s a second smokescreen at the end, when the General Assembly gives the governor a very short list of names from which to pick. The majority party will, in essence, hand the governor a menu of judicial candidates — including as few as two names — from which the governor must order. This one is easy to see through: If I take a list of 15 or 20 people and narrow it down to the final two for you to choose, I’m the one doing the real choosing.
Without a doubt, the majority party in the General Assembly will be in near-full control of the outcome, permitting the Governor to play a token role at the final stage in choosing between two or three of the majority party’s preferred nominees. That’s why this should properly be understood as moving to legislative selection of judicial vacancies.
If you prefer the state legislature to have most of the power to fill judicial vacancies, you now have that choice on the ballot this November. I’m very skeptical that is a wise choice.
There’s an additional concern, completely unrelated to our judicial system: This amendment may provide an avenue for allowing the General Assembly to bypass any veto.
There are certain types of bills that cannot be vetoed. One example is redistricting — it’s controlled completely by the General Assembly. We’ve got a list of those exceptions in our state constitution and this amendment would add judicial appointments to that list.
Here’s the catch: As you can see from the list below, every existing veto exception contains the limitation that the bill address only that subject and “no other matter.” In other words, you can’t pass a redistricting bill and tack on the entire budget and still be exempt from a veto.
But for this amendment, that crucial language (as you can see below), was omitted.
[Update: I filed a bill to close this loophole by adding the missing language. The majority party declined to call it for a vote. That means they know about the loophole and have now decided to keep it in place.]
3. Ethics and Elections Board
You can read the full amendment here.
Here’s what the language on your ballot will be:
Constitutional amendment to establish a bipartisan Board of Ethics and Elections to administer ethics and election laws, to clarify the appointment authority of the Legislative and the Judicial Branches, and to prohibit legislators from serving on boards and commissions exercising executive or judicial authority.
For the last two years, there’s been a battle between Gov. Cooper and the General Assembly over the Ethics and Elections Board. (These were two separate boards until recently, when they were combined.)
In short, historically the governor has had appointment authority over these boards. The General Assembly would prefer that it have appointment authority, with the requirement that, of the Board’s eight members, four would be appointed by the Republican leadership of the General Assembly and four by the Democratic leadership, presumably resulting in four Republicans and four Democrats. (Yes, a 4–4 board is likely to deadlock quite often.)
Here’s the key language on the Board’s composition:
Our Attorney General, Josh Stein, referred to this as “the most radical restructuring of our government in more than 100 years, since the Civil War. It would essentially give the Legislature the power to run the executive branch.”
4. Victim’s Rights
You can read the full amendment here.
Here’s what the language on your ballot will be:
Constitutional amendment to strengthen protections for victims of crime; to establish certain absolute basic rights for victims; and to ensure the enforcement of these rights.
We already have a “victim’s bill of rights,” but this amendment would expand the list of crimes to which it applies. This includes rights like being notified about court proceedings, being heard at sentencing, recovering restitution, and the right of the victim to be heard by the court if he or she feels these rights are being denied.
5. Cap Income Tax at 7%
You can read the full amendment here.
Here’s what the language on your ballot will be:
Constitutional amendment to reduce the income tax rate in North Carolina to a maximum allowable rate of seven percent (7%).
Originally, the proposal was to cap it at 5.5%, which is roughly where our income tax rate is now. The idea was that, by dictate of constitution, the income tax rate would never be allowed to go higher than it currently is. But a significant number of Republicans in the House were concerned that this would cinch the fiscal handcuffs a little too tight and may hinder the state’s response in the event we needed to raise revenue.
There were also concerns from Democrats that this would result in further underfunding public education, which is the state’s top expense.
6. Voter ID
You can read the full amendment here. It’s short. Here’s what it says:
“ Voters offering to vote in person shall present photographic identification before voting. The General Assembly shall enact general laws governing the requirements of such photographic identification, which may include exceptions.”
Here’s what the language on your ballot will be:
Constitutional amendment to require voters to provide photo identification before voting in person.
Its brevity is significant. The last voter ID law from 2013 included specific forms of ID that were acceptable. Upon review, a federal court found, “With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans.” As a result, the court held that the law had targeted African-American voters with “almost surgical precision” and struck it down.
So this constitutional amendment is a re-do effort. It’s left out all of the implementation language in order to create as little controversy as possible until the amendment is voted on this November — after which, the General Assembly is already scheduled to reconvene in a special session two weeks later to pass a bill the includes all the details. It is truly a case of “you have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”
It may be significant that last year’s audit of the 2016 election in North Carolina by the State Board of Elections found that out of 4,769,640 votes cast, it appears that one fraudulent vote would have been prevented with voter ID.
It may also be significant that during the debate on the Senate floor a proposed modification to the amendment would have required assisting those who don’t have photo identification in obtaining it, but it was shot down in a party-line vote.
It is estimated that 218,000 registered voters in North Carolina lack photo ID.
You have some important choices to make. So do your friends and family. Changing our constitution shouldn’t be taken lightly and North Carolina needs everyone to make informed choices in November. Most importantly, please remember to vote. If you’re not registered, you can do that here.