As the 2023 off-year election season gets underway, it is important to take a look at the complex process of amending the Pennsylvania Constitution that occurs in nearly every off-year election cycle. In Pennsylvania, the state constitution can only be changed by constitutional amendment. Amendments are passed by a simple majority of the Pennsylvania General Assembly in two legislative sessions and placed on the ballot to be considered by voters during statewide elections.
Off-year elections are typically local elections that occur in odd numbered years between general and midterm elections and usually have very low voter turnout. Off-year elections feature around 20-35% voter turnout as compared to at least forty percent in general elections, and voters tend to cast affirming votes rather than opposing votes.
Because of this, the state constitution has been amended almost 50 times since the current constitution was ratified in 1968. Unlike other states, Pennsylvania’s legislative amendments cannot be brought via petition from the public, in what is known elsewhere as ballot initiatives. They can only be proposed and voted on by the General Assembly. Under the current, any member of either chamber of the Assembly can propose an amendment to the constitution. If a majority of the Assembly members pass the amendment in two consecutive legislative sessions with a simple majority, the amendment will go on the ballot to the voters.
According to Spotlight PA, off-year election voters approve around 90% of the amendments that appear on the ballot, even though less than a quarter of the state’s population may be voting. During the Wolf administration, state government was divided for the entirety of the previous eight years. If a bill passed the House and Senate with Republican majorities in both chambers, Governor Wolf had the opportunity to veto bills that could not be overridden. This can encourage compromise, bipartisanship and cooperation as both sides work together to get things accomplished. Instead, the General Assembly turned to the amendment process, which is not subject to veto by the Governor, to circumvent the power of the governor.
According to Common Cause, 70 constitutional amendments were proposed between 2019 and 2020 and out of them, only three eroded the integrity of the executive and judicial branches. However, since 2020, as Republicans have called into question the overreach of Governor Wolf’s executive powers during the Covid-19 Pandemic, over 75 amendments have been proposed and 24 of them have targeted the independence of the courts and the governor’s office. Although this year, divided government in the General Assembly has prevented amendments from being added to the ballot this spring, some of the proposals passed last year that would have been added to our ballot this spring include: voter ID laws, election audits, the ability of the General Assembly to overturn regulations proposed by the executive branch with a simple majority and the temporary lifting of the statute of limitations for survivors of child sex abuse. In addition, several other amendments have been proposed calling for removing or minimizing executive regulatory power and delegating more regulatory power to the legislative branch. This has the potential to remove the governor’s ability to regulate abortions and place it in the hands of the General Assembly, which would create many changes across the Commonwealth.
