In Florida, starting with the 2008 election, any amendment to the state’s constitution will have to be approved by a majority of at least 60 percent of voters.
Ironically, the legislative referendum that requires this change wouldn’t have passed if the new law had been in effect. The legislature’s proposal was favored by only 57.8 percent of Florida voters last November.
The idea of a supermajority to pass something as important as a constitutional amendment has a lot of appeal, although Florida apparently is the first state to actually impose it.
In Colorado, there’s increasing support for making it more difficult to amend the Constitution. But mostly the talk has been about higher signature requirements, not mandating a 3-to-2 voter approval ratio.
If Colorado had had a 60 percent requirement, by the way, the state wouldn’t have a lottery, daylight-saving time or budget-busting TABOR and school-spending amendments, and we’d still be voting for judges running as Democrats or Republicans.
Club 20, the Western Slope advocacy group, had a discussion at the Capitol earlier this month about election reform. One of the major questions was whether it’s too easy to amend the Constitution.
Yes, it is. It’s easier in Colorado than in any other state. Only 15 states permit citizen petitioners to propose either statutory or constitutional changes. All but three of them require more signatures for a constitutional amendment than for a statutory change.
The exceptions are Colorado, Massachusetts and Nevada. But the other two states are tougher. Massachusetts says a constitutional change must to go to the legislature first, and Nevada requires a constitutional amendment to pass at two successive elections.
That’s one of the reforms suggested by attorney Mark Grueskin at the Club 20 panel. Grueskin has been working on ways to implement voter-approved Amendment 41 – a terribly inept example of the pitfalls of hastily drawn citizen initiatives – and thinks it’s a good idea to give voters more time to consider what they’re doing.
“I did not write Amendment 41,” he hastened to add.
In addition to requiring constitutional amendments to pass at two successive elections, Grueskin’s ideas for “election correction: imperfection without insurrection” also include allowing a week for public comment to initiative proponents before the formal title review process begins.
That’s the one way Colorado’s process is not too easy. The review and comment by legislative staff, attorney general and secretary of state is crushingly bureaucratic and nit-picky.
A Western Slope Republican, first-term Rep. Ellen Roberts of Durango, is thinking seriously of introducing a referendum to change the process. She wasn’t sure she was ready, though, for Reeves Brown, Club 20’s director, to go public with it at the election discussion. But now it’s out there.
Roberts envisions three changes: Increase the number of signatures required for a constitutional amendment petition; require that signatures be distributed across the state – a big issue for Western Slopers; and require a legislative supermajority to change any statute approved by voters.
Roberts has been reaching out for support from citizen groups, including her hometown League of Women Voters. It takes a lot of guts for a freshman to tackle such a sticky topic. Legislators are afraid of appearing to deny voters’ wishes in any way. Grueskin says he’s having a hard time convincing them to fix the problems with Amendment 41. Getting them to change the process that places even bad ideas in the Constitution could be an even bigger challenge.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
