The defeat of all four constitutional amendments on the ballot in March came as a surprise to most political pundits.
Particularly the margin of defeat and the size of the turnout which, albeit small — 21% — was certainly more than expected.
A quick look at electoral history shows that voters have been discerning when it comes to voting on constitutional amendments. Since enacting the Constitution in 1974, there have been more than 500 proposed amendments. Before this election, 321 had passed and 221 had failed. That's about a 60% pass rate, a failing grade by most standards.
One of the challenges facing bill drafters is crafting “concise and unbiased” language to go on the ballot. These brief summaries are all a voter may know about an amendment. For example, Amendment 1 was described as allowing the Louisiana Supreme Court to discipline out-of-state attorneys (this is already allowed by law). The ballot language added "and allowing the Legislature to create new specialty courts." The latter provision was seemingly the real purpose of the bill. Voters either decided we have enough courts or they adopted the "vote no on everything" mentality and killed this otherwise uncontroversial proposal.
More to the point was the language summarizing Amendment 2. This was a virtually impossible task since the amendment was a complete rewrite of Article VII dealing with taxation. Anything dealing with taxes gets the voters’ attention. The summary led with a permanent pay raise for teachers and a reduction in income tax. It described all of the "good" but omitted the provisions that would beg for more information.
Jay Dardenne
The amendment embraced many of the reforms that had been advocated for years by good government groups; however, it also included some problematic changes that resulted from trying to accomplish an entire rewrite in a single amendment (the State’s version of “one big beautiful bill”).
The legislative instrument creating Amendment 2 as introduced was not nearly as far-reaching as the 115-page end result. The complexity resulted from numerous amendments. As one legislator observed years ago, amending a bill repeatedly is “loving it to death,” i.e., making it so lengthy and unwieldy that it fails to pass. Although Amendment 2 was “loved to death,” legislators and supporters obviously believed the good outweighed the bad. The public felt otherwise.
Contrary to some commentary in the aftermath of the vote, this was not a watershed moment for Democrats. The party occupies no statewide office and struggles under a super majority of Republicans in the legislature. The state remains redder than a bottle of hot sauce. Nor was this a Soros-led repudiation of Republican initiatives. Left-leaning groups spent money, but not as much as those supporting Amendment 2. The amendments were trounced everywhere, including normally Republican strongholds.
Louisianans are not “conditioned for failure” as the governor inappropriately suggested. Voters simply were unwilling to accept this “one size fits all” approach.
Gov. Jeff Landry was wise to impose a hiring freeze in the wake of Amendment 2’s failure and the cloud of uncertainty hanging over the state as a result of the DOGE initiative and the anticipated revenue shortfall in the upcoming year. The next Revenue Estimating Conference will hopefully adopt a conservative forecast, as has been the case for a number of years. It is particularly important to do so this year, based on the speculative nature of the fiscal notes created to compare reducing income tax and increasing sales tax, which the legislature did last year. The hope is that they offset, but the possibility exists that they won’t.
As the Legislature ponders its next move, it would be wise to do several things: de-link and separate the competing objectives that were rolled into one bill; put the purposed amendments on a fall ballot when turnout would be higher; focus on reforms like gradually reducing and eliminating the business inventory tax with some concession to the few local governments which are largely dependent on this revenue source; provide easier legislative access to the relatively new Revenue Stabilization Fund but protect the Rainy Day Fund in its present form.
I am confident that the Legislature will give voters another opportunity to make necessary changes in the constitution in smaller and more understandable bites.