Petition Backing Constitutional Amendment Banning Non-Citizen Voting Approved for Circulation

Previously I wrote about a constitutional ballot measure effort, backed by erstwhile Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gary Emineth, currently a candidate for the state Senate in Bismarck, which would ban non-citizen voting in North Dakota’s constitution.

That sort of voting is already illegal under state law, but Emineth told me in an interview the constitutional protections are needed because in some other states local governments have been opening the door to non-citizen voting.

Today Secretary of State Al Jaeger has announced that the petition for Emineth’s measure has been approved for circulation.

You can read the measure itself, along with other information about it, below.

It’s going to be a heavy left to get this on the ballot. The law requires that petitioners submit at least 26,904 valid signatures by July 9 to make the November ballot (the deadline for the June ballot came and went back in February). That means Emineth and his crew have just 47 days.

That works out to collecting more than 572 signatures per day, every day, between now and the deadline.

I’m dubious as to whether they’ll make it, but we’ll see.

There are no ballot measures on the June ballot. For the November ballot there are currently five petitions out – four for statutory measures, one constitutional amendment – aside from this one:

• Repealing the Sunday closing laws
• Legalizing recreational marijuana
• Establishing personalized plates for volunteer first responders
• Increasing the state’s minimum wage
• Creating an ethics commission enshrined in the state constitution

I should note that the folks behind the Sunday closing law halted their effort when the chief organizer of the effort, Fargo businessman Brandon Medenwald, opted to run for the state Legislature as a Democrat.

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