Thread by @IJSanders

1. Has a Michigander ever given you the “Hand Map” to show where they’re from? Today we’re going beyond the hand, to the state’s legal DNA. Shaped by 4 constitutions, rural v urban competition, & a vestigial frontier spirit, it’s Wolverine time for #50Weeks50Constitutions.

2. The Northwest Ordinance said once a territory in the Ol’ Northwest got more than 60,000 adult male residents it could become a state. A census in 1834 found MI had achieved this, so it was time to giddy-up for statehood.
Read about the Ordinance here:

https://twitter.com/IJSanders/status/1209479045320192005

3. Every state needs a constitution, so Michiganders elected delegates for a convention. In touch with the Age of Jackson, half of the dozens of delegates were farmers & only ten were lawyers!

4. Apparently, the delegates really only cared about a bill of rights & suffrage requirements. Nevertheless, they banged out a full constitution, including an explicit separation of powers guarantee. Supreme court justices were to be appointed, but other judges elected.

5. Special care was also given to education & its funding. But one thing (it later turned out) was lacking was state entanglement with corporations. Voters approved the constitution overwhelmingly in 1835 (tho statehood would wait until over a year later), but trouble soon began.

6. As in many other states of the time, taxpayers were bamboozled by cronyism & failing public works projects. The legislature fell captive to special business interests, & the state was nearly bankrupted. Thus, only 15 years later, delegates arrived for another convention.

7. The 1850 constitution tried to correct this, but along the way the delegates wrote a lot of words, twice that of the 1835 version. They also oddly deleted a separate bill of rights & sprinkled the rights provisions in various articles, including in a “miscellaneous” section.

8. It also had a Jeffersonian requirement for the voters to decide whether they wanted a new constitutional convention every 16 years. Well, by a 3-1 margin they did just that on the first try, in 1866. So, Michigan had another convention in 1867.

9. But the voters weren’t very happy with the result, rejecting it in a referendum. Via a legislative maneuver, the governor and legislature tried again in 1874, but this version was even more soundly defeated. Indeed, calls for a new convention were again defeated five times.

10. Finally, in the wake of Teddy Roosevelt’s reelection, the voters okayed both a convention & the resulting constitution. It actually didn’t change all that much, but it restored a separate bill of rights, & gave the governor a veto.

11. The 1908 constitution kept the 16 year revision option. But a phenomenon called “ballot fall-off” made it hard. A majority was needed of those voting *in the election.* Many stop after voting at the top of the ballot, & might not vote on the lower-down convention question.

12. How to fix this? Amend it! Voters adopted an amendment (amendments, not convention calls, only required a simple majority!) changing the math, & then in a follow-up election a simple majority (barely) approved a convention in April 1961.

13. The driver of a new constitution was disapportionment between rural & urban senate districts. There were many more urban voters but rural voters controlled the chamber. Indeed, during the convention Baker v. Carr, the voting rights case, came down, quickening the issue.

14. The 1963 constitution made some progress toward apportionment (although the federal courts would have more to say about it) & calibrated the bill of rights with an eye toward what the Warren Court was up to. It also cut down on the constitution’s length, but only a bit.

15. Since then voters have approved over 30 amendments, which has nearly doubled the size of the already long constitution. The next time voters can call a convention will be 2026.

16. Sources:

Susan P. Fino, The Michigan State Constitution
crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/2010s…
crcmich.org/PUBLICAT/2010s…
libguides.udmercy.edu/michconst