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Anthony Sanders

@IJSanders

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1. This week’s edition of #50Weeks50Constitutions travels to the home of the College Baseball World Series & Payton Manning’s favorite audible. That’s right, we are heading to Nebraska, the #CornHuskerState, with their unicameral legislature—but that wasn’t always so.

2. The U.S. bought the land that would eventually become Nebraska in the Louisiana Purchase. It was shuffled around & governed by different territories until the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 which officially created the Nebraska Territory & set up a basic government.

3. This government included a three-member Supreme Court, a Governor appointed by the President, and a bicameral Legislature. This Act set the territory on the path to statehood, but it was not a smooth path and was delayed by the Civil War.

4. By 1864 the war was waning, and Republicans in Washington realized that Nebraska could help in future elections, so they passed an Act offering statehood in April 1864. The territorial government called for the election of delegates. But many voters did not want statehood.

5. Anti-statehood voters controlled the election. They elected delegates who promised that their first (and only) act would be to adjourn the convention without taking any other action. The delegates kept their promise and adjoined the July 1864 convention by a 37-7 vote.

6. So, the Territorial Legislature decided to draft a constitution themselves in 1866. Republicans controlled the process, & the structure of the government changed very little. The people approved this Constitution by a 100-vote margin, but it hit a snag in Congress.

7. Congress approved the Constitution, but conditioned statehood on the vote no longer being denied because of race. President Johnson vetoed admission, but Congress overrode it. The territorial Legislature agreed to the condition, but never put the question to the people.

8. Some questioned the validity of this Constitution due to the condition Congress placed on admission. The question came before the Nebraska Supreme Court in 1873 in Brittle v. The People, but the court cautioned against looking too deeply into the circumstances of adoption.

9. But this Constitution was not destined to last. Corruption was rampant (the Governor was impeached in 1871). In 1869 the legislature proposed a new convention, which the people approved by a wide margin in 1870 and the delegates met in 1871 to draft a new constitution.

10. They based their draft on Illinois’ 1870 Constitution. But the results were controversial, especially the exemption from taxation of Church property worth up to $5,000. Due to this, and other provisions, the people rejected this draft.

11. The Legislature proposed another convention three years later, which the people approved. The delegates met in 1875 and again used the 1870 Illinois Constitution as their model, but this time they left out some of the more controversial proposals.

12. This draft expanded both the House and Senate, created more executive offices, and no longer required Supreme Court Justices to sit as district court judges. The people approved this Constitution by a wide margin, and it is the current Constitution, though heavily amended.

13. Originally an amendment had to be approved by a 3/5 vote in both Houses, and then by a majority of voters in the next election. But, like some other states, people who voted on other ballot issues, but not the amendment, were counted as no votes.

14. Only 1 of twenty-some amendments passed under this system between 1875 and 1904, and the only one raised legator’s salaries and passed only after the Legislature undertook its own recount of the vote. So whether it *really* passed is still a debated issue.

15. This problem was solved by allowing straight-ticket voting, which also included voting for any amendments the chosen party approved. This process was used to add the popular initiative and to only require a majority vote on the particular amendment for approval.

16. The Constitution has continued to be amended through legislative recommendation and the initiative process. It was through this process that Nebraska changed to a unicameral legislature in 1937.

17. Nebraskans have continued to amend their Constitution over the years and one amendment on the 2020 ballot would remove the slavery exception known as convict leasing from the original 1875 Constitution.

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