The deadline for Arkansas lawmakers to propose constitutional amendments has passed. They can now refer up to three of them to voters for consideration in the 2024 general election. But after seeing all three of the referred amendments get beat at the ballot box last year, maybe the ledge will reject all of them and send nothing to voters?
“My favorite is to pass no constitutional amendments right now, but we’ll see,” Senate Pro Tem Bart Hester told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Michael Wickline, who did yeoman’s work on Sunday digging through all the proposed constitutional amendments and briefly describing them.
It’s hard to see any that would be favorites. Sen. David Wallace (R-Leachville) has a crime victims rights amendment that he said Gov. Sarah Sanders’ administration asked him to run. But perhaps Sanders isn’t willing to expend a lot of political capital getting it passed.
“I think the struggle will be there is always a lot of good proposals for constitutional amendments and it may get lost in the shuffle,” Wallace told Wickline.
Democrats have all sorts of good ones: Sen. Greg Leding (D-Fayetteville) wants to enshrine a warrant of habitability in the Constitution, a much needed basic protection for renter’s that Arkansas lacks. Rep. Deborah Ferguson (D-West Memphis) would ask voters to protect abortion rights, and Sen. Clarke Tucker (D-Little Rock) has one that would end partisan primaries and change the process so the top two vote getters advanced to a general election. But those aren’t going anywhere.
Another one that I fully support that’s probably not going anywhere: Sen. Bryan King’s (R-Green Forest) proposal to abolish the do-nothing lieutenant governor’s office.
