Come November, North Carolina voters will give a thumbs up or thumbs down to six amendments to the North Carolina constitution. Carolina Journal’s Julie Havlak details the six, and she provides interesting background.
Out of the 45 amendments proposed since the adoption of the 1971 constitution, voters rejected just eight.
“When amendments are put on the ballot by the legislature, the voters have approved them by about 80 percent,” said John Dinan, professor of politics at Wake Forest University. “If the legislature puts an amendment on the ballot, people are likely to give it the benefit of the doubt.”
This year’s ballot is unusual: Voters haven’t seen this many amendments since the 1980s.
Still, compared to states in the deep South and the far West, the ballot is modest. Louisiana and South Carolina amend their constitutions about four times each year, and the list of their amendments dwarfs that of Vermont, which only amends its constitution an average of once every four years.
Read on for a description of all six amendments.
