Help us improve in just 2 minutes—share your thoughts in our reader survey.
North Dakota Elections, Voting, and Initiative Process Amendment (2024)
| North Dakota Elections, Voting, and Initiative Process Amendment | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Election date November 5, 2024 | |
| Topic Elections and campaigns and Direct democracy measures | |
| Status Not on the ballot | |
| Type Constitutional amendment | Origin Citizens |
The North Dakota Elections, Voting, and Initiative Process Amendment was not on the ballot in North Dakota as an initiated constitutional amendment on November 5, 2024.
Measure design
This measure was designed to do the following:[1]
- prohibit early voting;
- prohibit voting by mail;
- prohibit ranked-choice voting and approval voting;
- prohibit electronic processing devices to count ballots and require ballots to be counted by hand by elected (rather than appointed) county auditors;
- prohibit voting machines;
- allow any North Dakota resident to audit a North Dakota election;
- require individual ballots to be made public on the secretary of state's website for at least six years;
- require initiative signature gatherers to be residents of North Dakota;
- prohibit any law limiting how initiative signature gatherers are paid;
- increase veto referendum signature gathering time period from 90 days to 180 days;
- require a two-thirds supermajority vote for the state legislature to refer constitutional amendments (rather than a simple majority vote); and
- reduce petition signature requirements to recall elected officials from 25% of those who voted in the previous general election to 10%.
Text of measure
Ballot title
The petition title for this initiative would have been as follows:[1]
| “ | This initiated measure amends Article III of the North Dakota Constitution. This constitutional amendment prohibits: early voting, voting by mail
(except for absentee ballots), ranked-choice voting, approval voting, electronic processing devices for ballot counting, voting machines, any law limiting how circulators of a petition may be paid, and unsupervised public drop boxes. It raises the state legislature’s threshold for putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot from a simple majority vote of each house to a two-thirds supermajority vote of each house. It increases the number of days within which a referendum petition may be submitted after a legislatively-enacted measure is filed with the secretary of state from ninety days to one hundred eighty days. It lowers the threshold to place the recall of a state, county, or legislative official on the ballot from twentyfive percent of those who voted at the preceding applicable general election to just ten percent. It requires elections to be administered by elected (as opposed to appointed) county auditors and requires ballots to be counted by hand. It allows any citizen of any state in the United States to audit a North Dakota election at any time. It requires that individual ballots be made public on the Office of Secretary of State’s website for no less than 6 years. It also requires that anyone found in violation of sections 11 through 21 of Article III, as enacted by this measure, shall be guilty of a class A misdemeanor.[2] |
” |
Full text
The full text of the measure is available here.
Support
Arguments
- Initiative sponsor Lydia Gessele said, "We've always done hand counting before we got these machines. They can find the people to do the job, because there are people that are willing to come in and do the hand counting."[3]
Opposition
- North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe (R)[3]
Arguments
- North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe (R) said, "When you hand-count, you bring in the human element of umpiring. You could have a wide strike zone, you could have a narrow strike zone. What you get with a machine is one consistent strike zone every single time."[3]
Path to the ballot
The state process
In North Dakota, the number of signatures required to qualify an initiated constitutional amendment for the ballot is equal to 4 percent of the population of the state. North Dakota is unique in using the population to determine signature requirements for initiatives and referendums. Petitioners may circulate a petition for one year following the secretary of state's initial approval. The signatures must be submitted at least 120 days prior to the election.
The requirements to get an initiated constitutional amendment certified for the 2024 ballot:
- Signatures: 31,164
- Deadline: Each initiative has its own signature deadline of one year after it was approved for circulation. The final deadline to submit signatures regardless of a petition's approval date was July 8, 2024.
Once the signatures have been gathered, the secretary of state verifies them using a random sample method. Since North Dakota does not have a voter registration system, the secretary of state may use "questionnaires, postcards, telephone calls, personal interviews, or other accepted information-gathering techniques" to verify the selected signatures.
Details about this initiative
- The initiative was filed by Lydia Gessele on September 18, 2023. It was approved for signature gathering on September 27, 2023, with 31,164 valid signatures due before midnight on February 12, 2023, to qualify for the 2024 primary ballot. To qualify for the November 2024 ballot, signatures are due by July 8, 2024.[4]
- Sponsors did not submit signatures by the deadline to appear on the 2024 ballot. The group could have submitted signatures by September 27, 2024, in order to appear on the June 2026 ballot, though sponsors said they would not submit signatures due to falling 4,000 signatures short.[5]
See also
External links
- Full text/approved petition
- Timeline
- North Dakota Secretary of State: Ballot Petitions Being Circulated
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 North Dakota Secretary of State, "Election and Petition Processes," accessed October 1, 2023
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 NWA Online, "North Dakota activists seek vote on hand tally of ballots," accessed December 21, 2023
- ↑ North Dakota Secretary of State, "Ballot Petitions Being Circulated," accessed July 1, 2023
- ↑ NY1, "Vote hand-counting measure effort fizzles in North Dakota," accessed September 27, 2024
 |
State of North Dakota Bismarck (capital) |
|---|---|
| Elections |
What's on my ballot? | Elections in 2025 | How to vote | How to run for office | Ballot measures |
| Government |
Who represents me? | U.S. President | U.S. Congress | Federal courts | State executives | State legislature | State and local courts | Counties | Cities | School districts | Public policy |
