Opinion ID: 836572
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The specific wording, historical development, and case law surrounding Article XVII, section 1

Text: We begin by examining the specific wording of Article XVII, section 1, which, as noted, prescribes the procedure for amending the constitution by legislative proposal, as well as setting out requirements for amendment by legislative proposal or initiative petition. The separate-vote requirement of Article XVII, section 1, provides: When two or more amendments shall be submitted in the manner aforesaid to the voters of this state at the same election, they shall be so submitted that each amendment shall be voted on separately. Although Article XVII, section 1, does not define what is meant by two or more amendments, it is important to note that the text focuses upon the potential change to the existing constitution, by requiring that two or more constitutional amendments be voted upon separately. Additionally, as a textual matter, the words shall be submitted in the manner aforesaid to the voters (emphasis added) could speak to the form that a proposed amendment must take as it passes through the legislative or initiative process, up to the time of its submission to the people. That particular text establishes, at a minimum, that the separate-vote requirement prevents the combining of several proposed amendments, which have been labeled from their inception as separate amendments, into one proposed amendment subject to a single vote. That is, all proposed amendments must be submitted to the voters in the same form in which they passed the legislature or were circulated by initiative petition. [6] However, it is not clear from the text that that construction is all that is meant by the separate-vote requirement. We now turn to the historical circumstances surrounding the development of Article XVII, section 1. As noted earlier, when the Oregon Constitution went into effect in 1859, Article XVII provided the only method for amending the constitution: