A relatively obscure state panel continues to face controversy over its role in explaining proposed constitutional amendments to voters.
The three-member Constitutional Amendment Publication Commission is tasked by state law with writing a paragraph or two to explain each amendment on the ballot "in simple and commonly used language." The materials are available at local boards of elections to anyone who requests them.
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Until last week, the commission was also required to write short titles for the amendments to appear on the ballot, but state lawmakers held an emergency session to take that duty away. Republican legislative leaders saying they feared the two Democrats on the panel, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Attorney General Josh Stein, would write captions that would present the six proposed amendments on the November ballot in a negative light.
Instead, the General Assembly passed legislation to have the heading "Constitutional Amendment" above each of the proposed amendments, followed by the language of individual bills passed this spring calling for each proposal to go before voters.
Gov. Roy Cooper has vetoed the change, leaving ballot titles in the hands of the commission. But lawmakers are expected to override the veto on Saturday.
Until the override occurs, however, Legislative Services Director Paul Coble, the lone Republican on the commission, doesn't want to meet to work on the longer amendment explanations.
"I do not think that it is prudent for the Commission to meet until it knows the outcome of the Saturday session and that it would be more prudent for us to meet once we know the scope of the work to be accomplished," Coble wrote in a letter Monday to Marshall and Stein.
He suggested the commission meet next Monday or Tuesday.
"I make this suggestion in order to avoid further politicizing the work of the Commission and to avoid additional controversy," he wrote.
Marshall, who last week strongly denied any outside pressure on the commission to write negative ballot titles for the proposed amendments, was clearly irritated by Coble's absence at a planned meeting Tuesday.
"Him not showing up today is an act of politicization of this," she said. "I think he needs to look at the environment that he works in. That's where most of the advocacy is coming from."
Under state law, the commission can't take a position for or against amendments. But Marshall and Stein both said that the amendment summaries lawmakers have put on the ballot are misleading and incomplete.
A proposed amendment on filling judicial vacancies, for example, focuses on merit-based selection of judges and doesn't mention that the General Assembly, not the governor, would control who would fill vacant seats on the bench between elections.
The six proposed amendments are:
- House Bill 913, which would shift appointment powers on state boards and commissions from the governor to the General Assembly
- Senate Bill 814, which would have the legislature, not the governor, fill judicial vacancies between elections
- House Bill 1092, which would require photo ID at the polls
- House Bill 551, which would expand court notice requirements for crime victims
- Senate Bill 677, which would guarantee the right to hunt and fish via undefined "traditional methods"
- Senate Bill 75, which would lower the constitutional cap on corporate and individual income taxes from 10 percent to 7 percent
"Despite Democratic members of the commission assuring lawmakers in writing that ‘the commission’s work is neither to support nor oppose an amendment,’ their grandstanding today validated our concerns that the commission’s work would be politicized and shows why the General Assembly needed to step in and pass legislation to ensure the voters did not receive confusing, misleading captions on the ballot this fall," Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore said in a joint statement.