4 constitutional amendments are on the ballot this election

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Do you know about the changes proposed around our state’s constitution this year? If not, don’t worry.

The first proposal you’ll be met with on your ballot deals with donations in elections. It has a lot to do with COVID-19 and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, and an organization he founded that gave grants to people who run elections for things like protective equipment.

“And so, election agencies around the country could apply for these grants and that started a conversation about whether or not that is an appropriate way to fund election systems which tends to be funded by state and local governments,” said Melinda Deslatte with PAR Louisiana.

A vote for this: bans the use of donations form a nongovernmental source or a foreign government to administer elections.

A vote against would: allow election officials to accept donations from outside sources.

Amendment #2 addresses protections for worshiping inside churches.

“This one is also about COVID-19 and the early days of the pandemic when we saw stray-at-home orders and limitations on gatherings and crowd sizes that extended into limiting church services,” Melinda continued.

A vote for this one would: declare the highest level of constitutional protection for the freedom to worship inside a church and require courts to apply these when the government tries to restrict access.

A vote against would: keep the level of protections for churches where they currently are.

Retirement is something many of us think about, some more than others -- why’s that important? Because amendment 3 aims to raise the amount of money the state pays on retirement debt.

“That is an issue that has come up a few times over the years. Obviously there has been an interest at the legislature about reducing that debt and paying off that obligation,” Melinda added.

Right now, 10% of any state surplus goes toward paying down retirement debt until 2029.

A vote for this would: raise it to 25% for the life of the debt and double the number of retirement systems.

A vote against would: keep the current system that’s in place.

Finally, the last amendment would provide more oversight of non-profit organizations that don’t pay property taxes.

“Non-profits that lease housing and have repeated public health and safety violations are the ones targeted by this amendment, essentially this is about blighted housing,” Melinda explained.

A vote for this would: allow local governments to remove those property tax exemptions if the organization leases housing and has had more than 3 health code violations in a 12-month period.

A vote against it would: maintain the current system of property tax exemptions for non-profits, including those with repeated health and safety violations.

Early voting starts Saturday September 30th and election day is October 14th.

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