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The Rules For Amending The Texas Constitution During 1970's

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Throughout my paper I am going to describe the rules for amending the Texas constitution, the attempts at constitution reform during 1970’s, explain why the reform attempts failed and discuss why I believe the Texas constitution should have board language instead of having frequent amendments. The rules for amending the Texas Constitution are found in Article 17 of the Texas Constitution. Article 17 of the Texas Constitution explains the rules in the following steps: proposed amendments, publication, submission to voters and adoption (Sec 1. Article 17, Texas Constitution, amended Nov. 7, 1972 and Nov. 2, 1999). The Legislature proposes the amendments and the proposal for submission must be approved by a vote of two-thirds of all members elected to each House (Sec 1a. Article 17, Texas Constitution). The proposition is then published twice in each newspaper in the state, also it will be published in a public place in each county courthouse for 30 days. The first notice should be published at least 50 days prior to the …show more content…

In 1971, the 62nd Texas Legislature passed a resolution calling a Constitutional Revision Commission. At least 62 percent of voters approved the need for the revision commission. The commission then went to work coming up with revisions that they believed needed to be made to the Texas Constitution. The majority of the reform was attempted in 1975 the Legislature approved submitting eight amendments to the Texas Constitution, which could be considered a new constitution, to voters. The special election in November 1975 all eight of the amendments were defeated. In Texas 250 of the 254 counties, none of the propositions were approved. During that special election only 23 percent of the voters actually voted. It’s rumored that Governor Briscoe warned that adoption of the amendments would result in state income tax, increase cost of state government and overly powered Legislature

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