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What we need is a new amendment
Posted Mar 2, 2011 by Tom Jackson
Updated Mar 2, 2011 at 06:18 PM
Offered here, a brief addendum to Wednesday’s column, “Bobbing along in Madison’s ripples.”
As noted, last year’s attempt to modestly amend the class-size amendment failed to achieve the 60 percent threshold necessary to become part of the state constitution. It was, however, favored by 54.5 percent of voters (2,751,878 out of 5,049,879 cast). Both the percentage and the raw numbers are revealing statistics.
In 2002, the original class-size amendment squeezed out a 4.8 point victory, 52.3 to 47.6 percent. Alas, the battle was waged before the 60 percent stipulation was adopted; thus was a change that has proved expensive and unwieldy without demonstrating any educational benefit (as critics claimed during the campaign) woven into the fabric of the state constitution by a narrow majority.
The raw numbers, compared to last November’s outcome, are also instructive: 2,550,201 (out of 4,867,872 cast) supported the class-size amendment.
To clarify, in 2010, more voters—by percentage and in absolute numbers—wanted to tweak constitutional class-size provisions than supported the amendment in the first place. But because of a change in the ratification process, this apples-to-apples preference of the voters was thwarted.
In that light, we propose a new state constitutional amendment: Ballot measures designed to modify or repeal amendments that (a) passed before the 60 percent mandate and (b) failed to achieve support from at least 60 percent of voters, shall be deemed modified or repealed if they attract (a) a larger percentage of the original vote while (b) matching or surpassing the original raw vote total.
We’re just trying to level the playing field.
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