On February 21, the North Dakota Senate passed SCR 4013 by 44-3. It requires initiative circulators to have lived in the state for 120 days before the first signature is collected. It bans paying initiative circulators. If the legislature passes it, it will go on the ballot in November 2024 for a public vote, because it is a constitutional amendment.
Dirty rotten scoundrels.
This bill should be declared unconstitutional should it get passed into law.
ALL VOTER CON AMDT / LAW INITS / LAW REFER / RECALL SECTIONS MUST BE SELF-ENFORCING —-
NOOO GERRYMANDER HACKS – EXCEPT ADDED CRIMES/TORTS .
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PR
APPV
TOTSOP
Legislatures and initiatives are both unnecessary. The law should be very simple, no more than a single printed page in normal font size, and something the average person can easily commit to memory, which rarely if ever changes. The only government we need are peace officers who would arrive at the scene to adjudicate whenever it is reported that the law has been broken. Their position would combine the duties of responding officer, judge, jury, and executioner. They would determine whether the law is broken, how it applies in a given situation, and who is at fault.
Other punishments they might dispense could include being publicly humiliated, whipped, dispossessed, correctively raped (for example for lesbianism), enslaved, or being sent to a house of pain, because the law has been broken. No public funds would be spent on warehousing lawbreakers. Peace officers can be paid through proceeds of poll tax and voluntary contributions.
There should also be a national defense force, but I don’t see any reason to subject it to democratic governance. The military can govern itself much like now, but with the generals and admirals picking a commander in chief. At the moment I am considering a census tax to fund the military. This would be different from a poll tax, because it would include the vast majority of people who would not be eligible to be voters. It could also include quartering of troops and a military draft of census tax debtors as alternative forms of payment.
Is there any state in which the legislature doesn’t retain the power to amend or repeal any law passed by an initiative?
If not, what are they afraid of?
My understanding is that many US states vote on state constitutional amendments by popular vote. Is that not correct?
This bill is blatantly unconstitutional.
Not being an expert on the North Dakota Constitution, I’m inclined to ask: how so?