Eagle Forum of Alabama executive director Becky Gerritson is urging voters to support the adoption of the proposed recompiled and updated Alabama Constitution next week at the ballot box.
During an interview with Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5's "The Jeff Poor Show," Gerritson explained how the recompilation would improve the "user friendliness" of the document.
"Eagle Forum normally does not tell people how to vote on the amendments," she said. "We normally just try to give a good explanation so people can make a better decision. You know how sometimes it makes no sense when you read — you're like, OK, what am I exactly voting on here? Or if you say yes, does it really mean no? So we just try to break it down. But in this election coming up, we are recommending a 'yes' vote in two different spots. The first one is the Constitution of Alabama of [2022]."
"We have 300 sections in our 1901 constitution, and we have 978 amendments on top of that," Gerritson continued. "They're all scattered all over the place. We have lots of areas in our constitution that have already been repealed, but it is still in there. We have some racist language. We have people who have been wanting to rewrite our constitution. We do not support a rewrite of our constitution. We have a good constitution. We do not want someone to come in and tear it all apart."
"What this does is it just rearranges the constitution, so the similar subjects are put together," she added. "It removes three little areas where we have racist language, and then it deletes any repeated or repealed provisions, and then it puts all the amendments that have to do with economic development together, so they're all kind of in one place. And then all of those local amendments would be in order by county, and they'll have a little nice numbering system so it will be real easy to read."
According to Gerritson, eliminating those weaknesses of the 1901 Alabama Constitution gives those seeking an entire overhaul to Alabama's constitution fewer reasons for their push.
"This is one of the reasons people want to get in here and rewrite this constitution," Gerritson explained. "They use the excuse that it is all out of order, and it doesn't make any sense, and it has racist language. So, if we actually fix these things, then that takes away those arguments for them to want to rewrite our constitution."
Jeff Poor is the executive editor of 1819 News and host of "The Jeff Poor Show," heard Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-noon on Mobile's FM Talk 106.5. To connect or comment, email jeff.poor@1819News.com or follow him on Twitter @jeff_poor.
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