How far will officeholders go to kill term limits?
Around the country, so-called representatives have repealed state legislative term limits enacted as statutes rather than constitutional amendments; gone to court to get term limits outlawed; and even, in one or two instances, ignored term limits on themselves until forced to step aside by judicial action.
I bet that even if voters enact a term limits law with a provision specifically prohibiting legislators from sending a question to the ballot to weaken or repeal voter-enacted term limits, such a prohibition would not stop lawmakers from proposing just such measures.
Well, it’s time for me to collect on the bet.
In the current legislative session, North Dakota State Representative Jim Kasper submitted a resolution, HCR 3019, to ask North Dakotans to weaken legislative term limits they’d passed just five months ago, last November. Kasper wants a limit of 12 consecutive years in a chamber instead of a lifetime limit of eight years.
What a shocker! He’d like to stay in power longer.
The law voters passed months ago states that the legislature “shall not have authority to propose an amendment to this constitution to alter or repeal” the term limits. This ability is instead “reserved to initiative petition of the people.”
It seems so clear.
Nevertheless, Kasper’s unconstitutional constitutional amendment barreled ahead in the North Dakota legislature until finally expiring in the senate just days ago.
Perhaps the new law should have included something about tarring and feathering lawmakers who try to ignore the ban on acting to undermine their term limits?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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6 replies on “Do Anything”
As long as the limit is defined as ‘twelve consecutive years’, that suggests that someone like Kasper could take a break from the legislature after ten years and seek office in a later election. Wouldn’t the clock get reset and he’d have a new consecutive twelve-years? As long as someone is willing to be a placeholder (like an eligible spouse?), he would never serve twelve consecutive years.
Why don’t you include the party affiliation of those opposing term limits? JimKasper is a Kook. Are the other opponents also republican. You know but seem afraid to talk about party affiliation.
Perhap, Pam, he didn’t state the party affiliates of the politicians in this case for the same reason as he didn’t state them when referring to city councils awarding voting rights to non-citizens.
Attacks on term-limits are bipartisan. We don’t need to be reminded of the party affiliation of Tom Foley (who successfully fought term-limts in court, only to lose the next election as a consequence), do we?
Who cares what you think! Paul is afraid to list party affiliations because most on here are KOOKS and would be offended — all ten of them!
Pam, Paul seldom if ever mentions the party affiliation of Drew Edmondson, the man who actually prosecuted Paul for his efforts on behalf of term-limits. Wanna guess what that affiliation is?
Kasper felt that he had nothing to lose.
A long-standing tradition is that, while attempts to violate American constitutions through legislation, regulation, or court rulings may often fail, those attempts are not truly penalized. At worst, an official may be dismissed, but employees don’t own their jobs.
And term-limits make dismissal palpably inevitable anyway.
The citizens of some state might indeed criminalize attempted legislation of some sorts, or merely pass a law causing swift dismissal for such attempts. But the power to prosecute or to judge such cases would be in the hands of public officials, and we see how that goes.