Conservatives any time changing the US Constitution is mentioned: The original words of the founding fathers are sacred! They can’t be touched!

Alabama conservatives: let’s rewrite this bad boy 978 times

"No such thing as institutional racism!"

—GOP

*If allowed by voters on the upcoming election day.

That’s a big if for Alabama.

Right? I wonder if there's a Vegas line on this one...

"Can"? Yes.

"Will"? Not a chance in hell.

Alabama, the bastion of free thought and education.

> The Alabama Constitution of 1901 is currently 420,000 words. The new Constitution would shrink slightly to 373,274 words, but that is three times more words than the next-longest state constitution - Texas, according to an analysis from the PARCA.

Damn. Who’s actually read that?

“The Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama says the size makes it the longest such document in the world.”

Alabama of all states.

Well we already passed the Amendment to allow it to be revised. It would be silly if we didn't ratify it now.

That's all this vote is, a ratification of the changes which we already voted yes to change.

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Alabama voters generally like racist wording AFAIK… what am I missing here?

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But will they choose to? I'd be curious to see how the vote turns out.

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I am curious as to what the actual language in there looks like and why it took until now to change it

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Alabama, you say? I'm guessing they'll instead try to add a few more.

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What wording would be left?

Article 1: Jesus Article 2: Roll Tide Article 3: Probably something racist Article 4: Jesus and Roll Tide

Wait. They have to ratify an amendment that was voted for by the people? Why would you need to? It’s like having to click “are you sure” when leaving a website.

> What on Earth makes their constitution so long?

Alabama's legislative process is... special. They don't have a regular old code of laws like basically any other sovereign entity on the planet. Rather, every single act of government in the state of Alabama, from statewide tax codes to your local city council renaming a school, comes in the form of a constitutional amendment.

The "fun" part about this whole setup is that the reason they organized their state government this way was because right around the turn of the 20th century, the KKK types who dominated the state government got really upset that city governments were undermining Jim Crow state policies with local ordinances, so they abolished all non-Constitutional legal code to consolidate 100% of political power in the state government. Specifically so they could force people to be more racist.

Edit: I did some more reading after I woke up this morning. The legislative process is not quite as bad as I originally said. Statewide laws can indeed be regular bills like other states have. It's every level below that whose governance that must be explicitly authorized by Constitutional amendment. Though since most issues of day-to-day life are matters of local governance, in practice this means that an astronomical amount of Alabama government goes through amendments.

The racism thing is 100% true though. The delegates who originally wrote the Alabama constitution explicitly said their goal was to enshrine white supremacy in the state constitution.

You haven’t been paying attention. Conservatives want to another constitutional convention so they can rewrite the constitution and strip us of our rights once and for all

All acts of the Alabama government come in the form of constitutional amendments. They literally do not have "laws" like any other state or country does. In order to hold a referendum, they have to pass an amendment to authorize the referendum.

If they want to so much as rename a post office in some sleepy little town, they have to pass a constitutional amendment.

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Every time this had been proposed previously there were extra changes that they tried to sneak through beyond just removing the racist verbage. Things like making it much easier to raise taxes or significant policy changes.

If they kept it to just removing racist leisure it would have passed decades ago.

Edit: From the article: "However, it does not make the policy changes that some reformers have sought"

So maybe this is a clean proposal for once. I'd be surprised if it is since this had normally been an excuse to paint opposition to tax increases and other policies as "racist"

Lived here most of my life and just learned the "why".

I only recognize article two.

That is ridiculous. My understanding is other states have them proposed and get enough signatures to have it appear on the ballot. If it passes, it passes.

Was it written by Twitter?

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Well you see, about 120 years ago, city governments in Alabama were passing local ordinances to try to treat black people slightly less like subhumans. The very fine people of the Alabama state government decided they couldn't be letting that kind of thing go on, so they rewrote the constitution to centralize 100% of governmental authority directly into the constitution, as written by the state government. Ever since, absolutely no act of governance happens in the state without having the state legislature go through the full constitutional amendment process.

Hey now. If they could read they'd be very upset by this.

In America, 80% of the time when you ask "why is this the way things are" the answer is racism.

The other 20% is corporate exploitation.

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While this is a seemingly good thing on the surface, I can't help but imagine the GOP will use the opportunity to enshrine awful shit in the new constitution.

Ehhh state constitutions are a lil different, and I think that “originalism”, while bullshit, is more about not reinterpreting the constitution. Rewriting it is a clearly defined process and shit, ya know?

There's that many racist words in there? Damn Alabama!

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I, personally, don't need a source for this because it sounds exactly like something people who lived in Alabama before 1990 would do, but it'd be nice if you had one.

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Opposition to tax increases IS racist tho.

Increasing taxes disproportionately helps those at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder. People who are disproportionately black and brown.

The other 40% is poor education

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Alabama

>The length and chaotic nature of the current constitution is the result of an attempt at centralization of power in the state government dating from the late 19th century, when white Democrats dominated state government.

Keeping in mind that this is before the D/R platform switcheroo in the early 20th century.

Before 1990? Alabama is as much of a racist shithole today as it was back then. The state that rejected progress. Over and over and over again.

Seriously, this BS again? You can call anything racist with this logic. Every policy will disproportionately affect some minority group in some way.

Previous attempts to remove racist language from the Alabama Constitution have actually been Trojan horses for handouts to teachers unions, abortion policy, and tax changes.

Each one of those is their own policy discussion with advantages, disadvantages, and trade offs. Including any of them in something sold as "removing racist language" is blatant dishonesty. You want to make those changes? Put them before the voters as what they really are and have the discussion about the policy. Trying to sneak your preferred policy, that you know you isn't supported by the voting public, undermines the democratic system of government.

You'd be surprised. Virtually every amendment passes, in my experience as a voter here the past decade. This one has the near (or maybe entirely) unanimous backing of the state legislature and I'd bet dollars to donuts it will pass, as will all 10 other amendments up for a vote...except for maybe #4, which seeks to prevent changes to how general elections are run for the 6 months preceding a general election. That one is a toss-up on my bingo card.

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420,000 words is roughly the same length as an epic fantasy novel. 900-1000 pages. Imagine having to read all that in legalese. Old legalese.

>You can call anything racist with this logic.

Yeah. Because most things ARE racist...our nation is built on a foundation of systemic racism.

Oh no, not funding for teachers, abortion policy and tax changes! How horrible that must be! 😂🤣. God conservatives are such fucking clowns.

Judging by test scores, no one from Alabama...

>Trying to sneak your preferred policy, that you know you isn't supported by the voting public, undermines the democratic system of government.

The Republicans literally just used SCOTUS to undermine democracy and the will of the public this year. Like 2/3 of Americans support abortion rights and oppose overturning Roe...so you pretending like Democrats putting changes in the constitution up for a public vote is "undermining Democracy" is real fucking rich!

In a democracy you have to build political support for your policies to get it passed. Regardless of the specific policies, trying to dishonestly end run the democratic process by lying to the electorate is antithetical to our system of government.

This gets me. We try to improve things and get excoriated for it. We leave things alone and get excoriated again. What do you want us to do? We are trying to modernize our Constitution. What is it to you? Why do you care?

Why don't you go to the Secretary of State website and read up on what the changes are, if you actually care. Oh , never mind you might have to address your own prejudices. Don't do it.

Well, there was that time a few years where they decided NOT to elect a pedophile to Senate. I’ll give them that much.

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You're a conservative, my guy....your party is still claiming Trump won the 2020 election....you don't get to complain about anyone else "lying to the electorate" or being dishonest. Especially on such flimsy grounds as "they proposed something for me to vote on and I didn't educate myself on what I was voting on....you're just a fuckin moron then...that's not on the politicians.

You're conflating federal and state levels of government.

Additionally, at the federal level, SCOTUS is supposed to be anti-majoritarian. Laws have to both 1) get enough support to be passed and 2) be constitutional. One of the primary roles of the SCOTUS is to check popular legislative and executive actions.

Even further, abortion never gained enough support to get any federal legislation passed, so it didn't even meet that hurdle. Even Ginsburg admitted that Roe's legal foundation was poorly reasoned. If it was actually as popular as you claim then it would have been easy to pass the legislation. But you 2/3s support is common of disinformation. 2/3s support abortion in some way, but it is normally presented as 2/3s support abortion in all instances. The reality is that most states will implement abortion restrictions in line with what the population actually supports: limits starting around 15-20 weeks. Which is pretty close to what most of Europe has had for decades.

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The Alabama voters did educate themselves on the proposed changes, and they felt their opinion on actual policies was more important than symbolic changes to wording that had no legal impact.

I'm not sure why you think a federal election controversy is relevant to a single state's policy discussion. Do you understand the federalist organization of our country?

And RBG is a piece of shit too, so Idgaf what she said. Also, no it's not misinformation. Polling has REPEATEDLY SHOWN 2/3 support for abortion rights and support for maintaininh Roe v Wade.

And the other 60% is also poor math education. Smh.

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46,726 racist words?

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I’m not saying its definitely gonna happen, just that they want to do it

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Please, what have we tried to improve? Abortion is illegal, being trans is illegal, Medicare expansion was denied, we're 50th in education (let's not kid ourselves with the new rating after covid isolation), gerrymandering, we're the fattest, and we voted for trump and a football coach.

I could go on. I was born and raised here, and the only thing that's changed is the level of apathy we have for politics because the right wing majority isn't going anywhere so nothing will ever change.

This whole constitutional modernization is a bread crumb we're tossing to the gerrymandered black communities we're fucking over.

They don't need a constitutional convention. They are planning in plain sight to overthrow American democracy by violent force.

The Federalist almost says the F-word:

> Put bluntly, if conservatives want to save the country they are going to have to rebuild and in a sense re-found it, and that means getting used to the idea of wielding power, not despising it.

> The left will only stop when conservatives stop them, which means conservatives will have to discard outdated and irrelevant notions about “small government.” The government will have to become, in the hands of conservatives, an instrument of renewal in American life — and in some cases, a blunt instrument indeed.

> [W]ielding government power will mean a dramatic expansion of the criminal code.

> If all that sounds radical, fine. It need not, at this late hour, dissuade conservatives in the least. Radicalism is precisely the approach needed now because the necessary task is nothing less than radical and revolutionary.

> For now, there are only two paths open to conservatives. Either they awake from decades of slumber to reclaim and re-found what has been lost, or they will watch our civilization die. There is no third road.

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You’re missing the gerrymandering and voter suppression that happens in surprisingly black areas. You’re missing the disenfranchised voters you put the blame on.

Except that won't work either because states still need to ratify the changes.

You would need 38 states to ratify the changes. That's why pretty much no changes to the constitution happen.

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Barely, so it is a qualified gimme

I’m not “missing” anything. What I’m saying is that currently in Alabama (including gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.) there is very little chance the state will amend the state constitution in a way that removes racist language.

And 100% reason to remember the name.

This got a genuine laugh out of me. Thanks!

AL's seems obscene in length, but I think most state constitutions are a bit on the long side.

https://www.ncsl.org/blog/2017/11/17/your-states-constitution-the-peoples-document.aspx

Yeah, Alabama is an outlier. TX at #2 is 88k lines. Article is a bit old, but doubt the ratio has changed much.

I guess it does make sense. The federal one is pretty light because they left most of the power to the states. The states would need to get more into the weeds in theory and they are easier to amend. Odd thinking about it though since when we talk about the constitution it is usually in reference to the nice tiny federal one.

Have to confess, I have not read my current state's one. US Constitution plenty of times, have a copy on my desk in fact (no particular reason, just haven't put it back), but the founding documents of our states are just as important.

Well bless their heart.

> Even Ginsburg admitted that Roe's legal foundation was poorly reasoned.

I don't believe this is true.

I have only ever seen evidence that RBG thought the Roe was procedurally shaky and open to attack. I cannot find anywhere that Ginsburg disagreed with the logic behind Roe, just that she felt it was politically problematic. It doesn't seem that she disagreed that Right to Privacy encapsulates abortion rights, just that basing abortion rights on Gender Equality rather than Right to Privacy would have been stronger footing.

She wrote in her dissent in Gonzales v. Carhart that "legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature."

As this article from June explains,

> On the right, Ginsburg has served an entirely different purpose: as a supposed vindicator of what the Supreme Court just did. Plenty have pointed to Ginsburg’s past criticisms of Roe to suggest that even she might have agreed with the present-day Supreme Court that the case was wrongly decided in the first place...

> There’s no question Ginsburg disagreed with how Roe was decided. But it’s hardly that simple.

> Indeed Ginsburg’s criticisms of Roe generally had to do with pragmatic and political concerns, rather than saying it was outright wrong. And far from wanting to leave this decision to the states, as Friday’s decision does, she repeatedly sided with the idea that abortion was a constitutional right. She had preferred that right to be phased in more gradually and that it rely more on a different part of the Constitution — the right to equal protection rather than the right to privacy, the basis of Roe.

In a speech at the NYU School of Law in 1993, Ginsburg said, "The Roe decision might have been less of a storm center had it both homed in more precisely on the women's equality dimension of the issue..."

She also points out how Roe's singularity provided a pariah for anti-choice activists to rally against: "Around that extraordinary decision, a well-organized and vocal right-to-life movement rallied and succeeded, for a considerable time, in turning the legislative tide in the opposite direction." She repeated this sentiment two decades later in a 2013 speech at the University of Chicago Law School: "That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly."

Anyways, if RBG did say somewhere that she thought Roe was poorly reasoned, I'm all ears. But I have never stumbled upon that. This is what I have come across.

Worse: Microsoft’s AI bot

Genuinely curious: what’s an example of a racist passage? I read through the comments and couldn’t find any examples.

clearly you never took the time to read your constitution. by time, probably a long long time

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Fucking amazing. My country is one hell of a place.

What improvement? That state is as backward as it's ever been. The racism is as shocking as it was 100 years ago. It's still full on Jim Crow, anti-progress which is just how they like it down there.

That’s just how they roll in Alabama

That's exactly what they'll do. They've tried it before in Alabama not to mention they do it all the time at Federal level.

Is this about interracial marriage? It’s gonna be funny to see if this fails to pass. And not because of who you expect 😂

I feel like any controversy is easily fixed by adding a "If the intrepretation of the re-worded version conflicts with the original, then the original intrepretation will take precedence" clause.

If the change is purely visual, and changing things for less offensive-sounding synonyms, then it's not really a change at all.

I think it's a silly use of man-power, but a harmless one which is (ideally) a purely visual change

Assuming entire races of people cant compete with other races without handouts is what’s racist.

Once affirmative action goes away things will shift back to being based in merit, not on the color of someones skin.

The other 90% is evil triumphs over good.

Why do I keep seeing fort minor lyrics in these posts? :'D

27% Remember the Titans

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Alabama votes can but won't.

Maybe it’s written like this:

> Well, now, murder, okay? Now, murder, well, that just ain’t right. Now, we understand that sometimes, well, sometimes a body gonna make a body angry or upset or whatnot, but killin’ a body? Just because he run over your dog or whatever he done? We don’t allow no murderin’ here in Alabama.

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Section 102 of the 1901 Constitution says: “The legislature shall never pass any law to authorize or legalize any marriage between any white person and a negro, or descendant of a negro.”

aside from the racist reasons behind it, this way of governing sounds *terribly* inefficient

When was the last time Alabama led at anything but football?

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Florida is similar. We're always amending our constitution instead of passing laws and regulations.

And usually it's "the people" adding amendments but the the people (our legislature) that'll pass laws.

20 mins for you is like a decade to us normal folks

I keep moving out of state to start life somewhere else only to move back. It's odd how much the rest of the country is similar to Alabama.

It’s ‘Bama, the answer to the question "why?" is always either "to rub the nose of those Northern carpetbaggers" or "listen, it’s necessary to make sure… certain segments don’t get uppity or immoral." Sometimes both.

The third option being so we can let corporations destroy the environment.

Try Vermont or Oregon next - Former Alabamian

I just moved back from cave junction. Most of Oregon was beautiful but very red. Imagine my suprise at all the rebel flags I saw in the state of Jefferson.

Hey, thought I should clarify something for you. The 19th century is 1800's and the 20th century is 1900s. So we're talking 1800-1900 for the "turn of the 20th century", not Y2K. Thought you should know.

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In 1901 they didn't care about the environment but they did care about something else.

Ah I lived in Bend.

I do miss Oregon. Such a beautiful place. I also met a beautiful woman there. But I don't have either now. Maybe soon I can go back.

I read this in Stephen Root’s voice. From that one documentary.

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Oh I'm fully aware.

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What have "they" "enshrine[d] ... in the constitution" "at federal level"?

Were your eyes open?

Gonna be honest, this is the exception that proves the rule. If it's the beginning of a trend, then count me happily surprised, but i very much doubt that'll happen.

It’s weird right? I saw more rebel flags in West Virginia than I ever had in Alabama.

People keep trying to appropriate our culture. I will say my thick choctaw county accent really made dating easy when I was in oregon.

The republicans of Alabama want to be able to take away the pronouns you use for yourself but keep the ones they use for you. Did I get that right?

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What's the point of being called a united America if the states can just do what ever the fuck they want??

This formula is complicated by the fact that the owner class uses racism as a marketing campaign to sell corporate exploitation.

Or try Burlington, VT next. It’s a gem.

I just went and visit a friend in coastal Maine. had a very familiar conversation with a guy about blue grass and how he feels about minorities while there. I think my next move is gonna be out of the country. I wanna go somewhere that doesn't speak the damr language as me.

The actual reason is because a shocking amount of state business must be conducted via constitutional amendments. One example is an amendment that controls the wages of specific judges. Shit that should have been laws, or even just some sort of policy.

This was done with the specific intent of enshrining white power in Alabama's government. It gives all of the power to rich white men in the legislature. That makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the majority-black regions to exercise any kind of local power.

I don't think many people who have actually read the U.S. Constitution want it changed. It's a concise, carefully-worded and well-thought-out document that gives the Federal Government the tools it needs to operate, without getting bogged down in details. Even in Liberal circles, the most I ever hear are calls for changes in term limits or the electoral process, which is more like tweaking the Constitution rather than changing it.

State Constitutions serve a different purpose, though, and are right to be more detailed, and also more flexible. As a general rule in government, the closer you are to individual people, the more precise you should be in law and policy. Something as distant as the US Constitution should be very broad and general, do you learn more with procedure than anything; something as close as a city ordinance is where you should find things like how to keep your yard, etc.

.....but they won't. it's a feature, not a bug.

....and it's the only word spelled correctly in the entire document.

That's covered in Article 2: Roll Tide....

We spent a decade in the late 90s and early 00s fighting for a new constitution. I dunno if "overthrowing the racist government" counts as trying in your book. It sure as shit does in mine.

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The smaller word count is probably just from removing all instances of the N word.

I've been to many states, but I live in Alabama and always have. This place has so many rebel flags. What parts have you lived in? They are all over the place in the areas I've been. Definitely more than in any other state I've been to.

Granted, when traveling to other states I tend to stay on highways so I likely don't see nearly as much backwoods as I do around here.

That sounds like Alabama. The state gets to decide on what the voters get to decide. Fuck this place.

You're right. Most people down here act like it's still 1800. Casual racism is alive and well.

Down on the coast in bama. But, I was working in rural areas in WV. I also had never seen poverty quite like I did in WV.

They want to use slurs, not pronouns.

See, that's the way I feel about Alabama. When going through really backwoodsy places in bama, I always think "I've never seen poverty like this anywhere else."

So it seems like it's usually the poor areas with the rebel flags, regardless of what the state is.

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Strong correlation that.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/19/steve-bannon-us-constitution-tea-party-republican-state-legislatures

And these people claim to hate big government.

They only hate it when it benefits people who aren't white males.

> For example, voters in 2000 approved an amendment repealing an unenforceable interracial marriage ban — although 40% of voters voted against the repeal

Hooray! 60% of our state wants interracial marriage to be legal. Glass half full, guys!

There are a lot of weird laws just sitting and we don't do much about them because they don't really matter.

Like the famous "you can't buy a duck on Sunday" or some weird shit.

420k down to 373k, that's a lot of racism.

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I was referring to Federal law not the US Constitution. The Alabama "constitution" is closer to Federal law than the US Constitution, hence the comparison. Check out the explanations by other posters in this thread.

In Oregon there is an actual vote this year as to whether or not to remove slavery from the state constitution. What the…

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It starts with "In the beginning, God made the Heavens and the Earth..."

Hey friend I’m on your side on this one. Technically they are pronouns and I’m just pointing out the obscene hypocrisy that is the right. We can’t refer to ourselves based on who we feel to be but the right will fight tooth and nail to keep the words they want to refer others by. It’s hate pure and simple.

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