Opinion ID: 1932230
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: 1958 amendment to ง 273

Text: The majority fails to probe the basic reason for the prohibition in state constitutions against requiring a single vote on more than one amendment, namely: to prevent logrolling. Indeed, the word is not mentioned in the opinion. Significantly and commendably, however, the majority recognizes HCR 41 does contain disparate purposes and that under our decisions interpreting the original ง 273 it would have been held to violate that section. Without using the term, the majority recognizes this as a case of logrolling. Majority opinion, pp. 857-858. It is the majority's conclusion that under the 1958 amendment to ง 273 the embracing of two disparate, unrelated purposes in the same proposed amendment to the Constitution is not prohibited, and it does not matter that HCR 41 does this very thing. My conclusion is exactly opposite. In my view the present ง 273 in no way diminishes the prohibition against logrolling. I will give the reasons for my view, and then the reasons I have concluded the majority is wrong. Chapter 629, Laws 1958, submitted a proposed amendment to ง 273, ratified by the electorate August 26, 1958, and inserted into the Constitution by Chapter 78, Laws 1959 Ex.Sess. The pertinent amended portion reads: [A]nd if more than one amendment shall be submitted at one time, they shall be submitted in such manner and form that the people may vote for or against each amendment separately; and notwithstanding the division of the Constitution into sections, the Legislature may provide in its resolution for one or more amendments pertaining and relating to the same subject or subject matter, and may provide for one or more amendments to an article of the Constitution pertaining and relating to the same subject or subject matter, which may be included in and voted on as one amendment. [8] Before analyzing the portion of the present ง 273 above quoted, let us first take a look at the original and the present ง 273 which are set forth in their entirety in Appendix G. Such examination reveals a clear purpose of the 1958 amendment to ง 273 to make it mechanically, or procedurally easier for the people to have an election on whether or not to amend our Constitution. This is obvious. Serious hurdles to the legislative and voting process were either reduced or removed altogether. [9] In doing so, however, the people clearly did not mean to make it easier to conduct a fraudulent election. The amendment was designed to make it easier to have a fair and honest election, expressing the free will of the people, and not to make it easier to call an unfair election, as the majority has concluded. I respectfully remind my colleagues that it is just as cheap and just as inexpensive to permit the people to vote separately on two proposed amendments in the same election as it is to require them to cast but one vote on them. It would have been just as cheap, and just as simple to have provided under HCR 41 for the people to vote on the nuclear power plant separately. It would have cost no more, and much more important, the election would have been fair. This sends up in smoke any argument that facilitating the evil of logrolling is somehow a requisite or consequential part of any overall plan to make it easier to amend a Constitution. This Court's approval of logrolling can never make it easier to cheaper to conduct an honest election to amend the Constitution. It will only make it easier, in fact no problem at all, to conduct an unfair, fraudulent election. What does the above-quoted portion of the present ง 273 mean? It provides first: [A]nd if more than one amendment shall be submitted at one time, they shall be submitted in such manner and form that the people may vote for or against each amendment separately; ... This is the identical language of the original, and obviously means something. Next: [A]nd, notwithstanding the division of the Constitution into sections, the Legislature may provide in its resolution for one or more amendments pertaining and relating to the same subject or subject matter ... which may be included in and voted on as one amendment. To me this means that it does not matter that more than one section of the Constitution is amended so long as it pertains and relates to the same subject or subject matter. And, the same subject or subject matter means just what courts have consistently interpreted one subject or the same subject to mean, namely: that the propositions to be voted on are related and dependent on each other, so that the amendment should either be passed or defeated in its entirety. If they are disparate, unrelated, then by all common sense they are indeed different subjects. And finally: [A]nd may provide for one or more amendments to an article of the Constitution pertaining and relating to the same subject matter, which may be included in and voted on as one amendment. This means the same thing. It does not matter if an entire article of the Constitution is to be amended, this is all permissible if it pertains and is related to the same subject or subject matter. It is clear to me that the above-quoted portion of the present ง 273 was inserted to meet the locational objection which this Court raised in Power v. Robertson, supra , when many sections of the Constitution were implicated in a proposed amendment. The functional test of what is and what is not a single subject, or the same subject as Courts have always interpreted the term, remains intact. The functional test of whether a proposal contains more than one subject is not whether the propositions in the proposed amendment can somehow be embraced under one general subject. Such a test would be meaningless. Instead, the functional test consistently applied by courts is a practical, common sense examination: do the propositions have two disparate purposes, and each capable of being voted on without affecting the other, or are the propositions so related and interdependent that the entire package should be passed or defeated in its entirety? If the first, then courts have held the proposal to contain more than one subject, and therefore two amendments, requiring a separate vote on each; and if the latter, then the proposal has been held to contain but one subject, and a single amendment requiring only one vote. By this interpretation the courts give full faith and credit to the spirit of constitutional provisions such as addressed here: to prevent logrolling. Kerby v. Luhrs, supra ; State v. Timme, supra ; State v. Silver Bow County, supra; City of Coral Gables v. Gray, supra ; Moore v. Brown, 350 Mo. 256, 165 S.W.2d 657, 662 (1942); People v. Sours, 31 Colo. 369, 74 P. 167 (1903); 16 Am.Jur.2d Constitutional Law, 348, p. 366, and cases cited, note 33. There is nothing to remotely suggest that the people in 1958 proposed to ratify an amendment that would sanction logrolling. The majority's interpretation of this 1958 amendment will add gray to the hair of the elder statesmen still living who sponsored it, and cause stirring in the graves of those of them who have passed beyond.