Many college students will be voting for the first time on Nov. 5th. Voters know that they will be voting for president and tend to go to the polls with a candidate in mind, but they don’t always have the same convictions when it comes to the other issues on the ballot that they will be voting on. It can be helpful to do some research and decide how to vote on these issues beforehand to make the voting process easier and eliminate worries about voting incorrectly by mistake.
The federal section of the ballot will be where voters can vote for U.S. President, a member of the Senate, and a member of the House of Representatives. Then they can vote for several state positions, like the governor and lieutenant governor of North Dakota. The next section will include five ballot measures specific to North Dakota.
The first three issues that will be on the North Dakota ballot are legislatively referred constitutional amendments, meaning that they were created in the state’s legislature and will amend the state’s constitution if passed. The next issue is an initiated constitutional amendment, which is initiated by citizens to amend a state’s constitution, and the last issue is an initiated state statute, which is initiated by citizens to amend a state’s statutes. Statutes are also known as acts or laws and are under the state’s constitution.
Constitutional Measure 1 will change how North Dakota’s constitution refers to some institutions to use more respectful language. According to the language used on the ballot, the changes will include “the “school for the deaf and dumb of North Dakota” is changed to the “school for the deaf and hard of hearing”; a “state hospital for the insane” is changed to a “state hospital for the care of individuals with mental illness”; an “institution for the feebleminded” is changed to a “facility for individuals with developmental disabilities”; and a “state hospital for the mentally ill” is changed to a “state hospital for the care of individuals with mental illness.””
Constitutional Measure 2 will make it so that “proposed amendments would require both constitutional and non-constitutional initiated measures to be limited to one subject as determined by the Secretary of State,” according to the ballot. Initiatives are programs or policies meant to address some issue or achieve a goal the government has. This measure would mean that initiatives must be focused on one subject. It would also require that initiatives be voted on twice and pass both votes to go into effect.
Constitutional Measure 3 “would decrease the amount of money that can be expended from the state legacy fund during a two-year period from 15% to 5% of the principal of the fund. The state legacy fund is a fund that receives 30% of tax revenue from oil and gas production each month,” according to Ballotpedia. The state legacy fund receives a portion of the taxes from oil and gas production every month, and this would protect it from being depleted too quickly by limiting how much can be withdrawn from it in a two-year period.
Initiated Measure 4 “would prohibit political subdivisions from levying any tax on the assessed value of real or personal property, except for the payment of bonded indebtedness incurred through a certain date,” according to the ballot. This means that the state and city governments would not be able to charge property taxes.
Initiated Measure 5 “would allow for the production, processing, and sale of cannabis and the possession and use of various forms of cannabis by individuals who are 21 years of age and older,” according to the ballot. This would allow cannabis to be used, grown and sold in North Dakota, and take precedent over local laws against these practices. It would also regulate cannabis sales and employer rights in this market.
It only takes a little research to understand what these measures are proposing, but it can be very useful to understand how these measures will affect life in North Dakota to decide how best to vote when the time comes.