A reworked version of Alabama’s 121-year-old Constitution will appear on ballots in November, giving voters the opportunity to ratify the changes, a panel of lawmakers and legislative advocates reminded residents Tuesday.
The proposed Alabama Constitution of 2022 is a recompiled version of Alabama’s current constitution, which was initially passed in 1901. On Nov. 8, Alabamians will be able to vote on 10 statewide amendments, along with a ratification of the re-worked document.
The recompilation removes racist language and deletes repealed portions. The new version of the constitution was allowed because of state legislation passed in the 2022 session, which lawmakers passed without dissent.
People are also reading…
“When we say, ‘No longer are we that 1901 Alabama – that again, we know this from the transcripts – is rooted in white supremacy, deliberately disenfranchised Black voters, that we can say we now have a new document that spells out who we are today: That gives me hope in the future for the state of Alabama,” said Rep. Merika Coleman (D-Birmingham), who sponsored the legislation to recompile the constitution.
Coleman spoke at a discussion of the proposed constitution held with the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama at Samford University. She was joined by Othni Lathram, the director of the Alabama Legislative Services Agency and code commissioner for the constitution, as well as Rep. Danny Garrett (R-Trussville) and Catherine Randall of Alabama Citizens for Constitutional Reform.
Garrett said a draft of Coleman’s legislation was delivered in January, a month before the legislative session began. Before the draft was created, he said groups of Democratic and Republican legislators held lengthy discussions shortly after the death of George Floyd in 2020 with hopes of finding ways to work together, resulting in multiple bills and measures.
“Through these conversations, which continued for a year, we had better understanding; we built trust,” Garrett said. “We had some conversations we probably never would have had before, and there became some awareness on my side of the aisle that there were some things that we definitely needed to address and do.”
Coleman said she wanted people to know two things: The new constitution was a bipartisan effort amongst state legislators and the recompiled document is separate from amendments, which will follow it on the ballot.
“This is a ratification of the work of the legislature, so it’s not an amendment,” Coleman said.
Lathram noted that the 10th amendment on the ballot will coincide with the recompilation. Lathram said it allows the Code Commissioner – the role in which he currently serves, to place constitutional amendments ratified before or on the same day of the constitution in logical order. The amendment also allows for the transfer of annotations from the 1901 document to the 2022 document.
Lathram said the latter is important so that the new constitution doesn’t erase 120 years of litigation, using issues like budgets and tax collection as examples.
“We don’t want to have some argument that the day after we ratify this, that you’re imposing a 2020 Webster’s dictionary definition rather than a 1901 definition and changing all of that law and upsetting that status quo,” Lathram said.
Lathram also said the group was intent on keeping changes narrow – in efforts to stay in line with the charge of only changing what was necessary, some proposed grammatical changes were cut.
The amendment will only pass if the recompilation passes.
Lathram said the “recompilation had about a dozen spots where the code commissioner at the time fixed some grammar issues, fixed some misspelled words, added some punctuation…we took all of that back out,” he said. “It’s a little bit embarrassing. I hate that we had to, but that’s how seriously we took the charge from the legislature and the voters about not making any other changes.”
According to an analysis from the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama, the 1901 Constitution stands at 420,000 words, while the 2022 Constitution’s deletion of repeated text puts it at 373,274. The analysis notes that even with the reduction, Alabama’s constitution is still three times longer than the next-longest state constitution.
The new constitution will also group amendments by category, such as branches of government or economic development. Local amendments will be organized by county, then further broken down into various chapters.
The reworked document will still keep a constitutional limit on local property taxes and keep power concentrated in the state legislature rather than at the local level, as well as keep amendments to certain counties or cities embedded within the constitution.
The recompilation vote will appear on the ballot before the statewide amendments. Alabamians can vote on the new state Constitution Nov. 8.
