Ralph Muecke

Gladstone

North Dakota is under attack! By who? You guessed it. By those the people elect to represent them in state government of course.

I’m talking about the current 2019 Legislative session. We elect people to go to Bismarck to represent us in state government. Instead of representing our wishes and needs they try to legislate our rights away.

Our state is governed by a constitution which is drawn up for and by the people to protect the people from their government and to keep their government from getting to powerful.

But those we elect believe the people have too much power so they need to enact amendments that restrict our rights by giving themselves more power to restrict our rights, say nothing about violating the constitution and the oath they took to uphold it.

There are some ten bills and resolutions under consideration. All if enacted, would cripple our right to amend “OUR”, the “PEOPLES” constitution. These resolutions would have to be ratified by a simple majority vote of the people. It’s called giving us the shaft and making us feel good while giving it to us.

If we the people want to amend the constitution we have to go out and obtain signatures of four per cent of the states population to bring a proposed amendment to a vote and all that our legislators have to do is press a button on their desk to place a proposed amendment on the ballot for a vote. Is this fair?

If our legislators want to place a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot, shouldn’t they, like the rest of us, have to go out and obtain the required number of signatures just like we do?

Remember, the constitution belongs to the people, not those we elect.