Opinion
November 16, 2002
To hear Sandra Lane Smith tell it, the over-whelming
majority of Alabama voters didn't know what they were doing on Nov.
5 when they approved Amendment One. The amendment summary on the ballot
was vague and misleading, she says in a lawsuit filed in Montgomery
County Circuit Court.
We beg to differ with the lady. Smith, president
of the Alabama Association for Judeo-Christian Values, apparently
doesn't think most of her fellow citizens can read and comprehend
very well.
Her association opposed Amendment One, which is
certainly its prerogative. However, to claim that voters didn't know
what this well publicized amendment was about is insulting.
The amendment was drafted to ensure that any new
constitution for Alabama, whether written in a constitutional convention
or drafted by the Legislature, could not be implemented without the
approval of the voters in a statewide referendum. Why anyone would
oppose that is hard to fathom, but Smith's association did so.
The association wants to keep Alabama's 1901 constitution,
despite the fact that there is a great deal in it that is not in keeping
with Judeo-Christian values as most people understand them.
How vague and misleading would you find the following
language to be?
Proposing an amendment
to the Constitution of Alabama of 1901, providing that any new proposed
Constitutional of Alabama adopted to replace the existing Constitution
of Alabama of 1901, shall become effective only upon its ratification
by a majority of the qualified voters voting on such ratification.
That summary is a little stilted perhaps, but hardly
vague and misleading. It also fairly represents the full legal language
of the amendment.
The vote on Amendment One was 81 percent for and
19 percent against. Smith's side lost, big-time. But it didn't lose
because people didn't understand the amendment. Her lawsuit should
be promptly dismissed.
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