HCR3003 proposes that any future amendments to the North Dakota Constitution be submitted to the electorate and receive approval from at least sixty percent of the voters.
The House adopted HCR3003 on January 29, 2025, by a vote of 65 to 28. We have assigned pluses to the yeas because constitutional amendments should not be ratified by simple majority votes. The current threshold of just more than 50 percent of votes cast statewide does not amount to “consent of the governed.” A supermajority is necessary to adequately protect the rights and liberties of all North Dakotans—in every part of the state—from the “dangers of democracy” or a “tyranny of the majority.” In other words, it’s the “constitutional majority” that must prevail among a free people. Article IV, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution guarantees to “every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” which implies government limited to the “rule of law,” with safeguards for the minority, as opposed to mere, unchecked “majority rule.”
