It’s sad when the people must protect themselves against their own legislature. But that has been the case ever since the people adopted the power of initiative and referendum.

Often called the “people’s branch,” the legislature has waged a relentless campaign to restrict or destroy these rights of the people. In recent decades, it has ceased to be the people’s branch.

It now has a measure on the November 2024 ballot to make it impossible for citizens to initiate constitutional amendments. Legislators are still angry that the initiative was used to establish medical marijuana and to create an ethics commission when the legislature refused to give neither of them the time of day. 

People Stand Up

But the legislature come back with new restrictions on voting and petitioning in every session so it becomes necessary for the people to stand up to this arrogance. 

Up until this point, I have been encouraged by Governor Doug Burgum’s protection of the executive branch from encroachment by the legislature. However, he seems to have blinked on the controversy surrounding the North Dakota Public Employees’ Investment Board.

He asked for Chairwoman Mona Tedford Rindy’s resignation and she refused because the legislature had added two more legislators to the board. They already had two.

Violate Constitution

Rindy correctly insisted that legislators serving on an administrative committee was a violation of the constitutional principle of “separation of powers”.

Alexander Hamilton, writing in Federalist No.73:

“The propensity of the legislative department to intrude upon the rights, and to absorb the powers, of the other departments already been more than once suggested.” 

Fancying Themselves

Then in Federalist No. 71 he wrote:

“The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any quarter; as if the exercise of its right, by either the executive or judiciary, were a breach of their privilege and an outrage to their dignity.”

How did this chasm between legislators and their constituents on policy issues develop to a point of disconnection?

While issues are the name of the policymaking game, they don’t come into play in local legislative elections, where a discussion of issues is considered “throwing mud” or being a “troublemaker.”

So will the people vote against the neighborhood friend for voting to destroy their constitutional initiative? Narrowing it down, will they dump the two senators who turned their backs on the chaplain during prayer in the Senate? 

No Moderates?

Where are the likes of those outstanding Republican moderate senators – Don Holand, George Longmire, Bob Chesrown, Evan Lips, et al. Aren’t they running anymore? Instead, we end up with several radicals who capture the public discussion, disrupt the proceedings, and refuse to negotiate. 

Of course, political polarization within the Republican Party has made it difficult to elect moderates. This normally happens in one-party states.

In fact, President Kennedy was in Texas to bring together the two factions in the Democratic Party. He was looking at the 1964 election and his need for the electoral votes in Texas.

In order to set aside this legislative war on its own people, it will be necessary to develop more dialogue between the legislators and the people. And the voting records of legislators should be widely distributed.

All of this is easier said than done, especially in the present chaotic state of policymaking in North Dakota.