upholding a ballot question asking, "Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require a unanimous recommendation of the Board of Pardons before the Governor can pardon or commute the sentence of an individual sentenced in a criminal case to death or life imprisonment, to require only a majority vote of the Senate to approve the Governor’s appointments to the Board, and to substitute a crime victim for an attorney and a corrections expert for a penologist as Board members?”, without referencing the existing requirement that the recommendation be made by only a majority of the Board of Pardons
How later courts described this case
- upholding a ballot question asking, "Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require a unanimous recommendation of the Board of Pardons before the Governor can pardon or commute the sentence of an individual sentenced in a criminal case to death or life imprisonment, to require only a majority vote of the Senate to approve the Governor’s appointments to the Board, and to substitute a crime victim for an attorney and a corrections expert for a penologist as Board members?”, without referencing the existing requirement that the recommendation be made by only a majority of the Board of Pardons
- explaining that the separate-vote requirement “acts as a safeguard to ensure that our citizenry is fully informed of the proposed amendments to the Constitution.”
- holding that “the voters should be given free opportunity to modify the fundamental law as may seem to them fit....”
- noting that ballot question in Bergdoll v. Kane, 731 A.2d 1261 (Pa. 1999), was examined by considering “the content, purpose, and effect of the PAM - 2 proposed amendments”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SAYLOR, Justice,
concurring.
I join the majority in holding that the amendments at issue do not violate the proscriptions of Article XI, Section 1, but disassociate myself from the majority’s apparent rejection (made most explicit in its footnote 4) of a subject-matter focus to determine whether alterations are sufficiently interrelated to justify their presentation to the electorate in a single question. 1 See generally Bergdoll v. Kane, 557 Pa. 72, 89 , 731 A.2d 1261, 1263 (1999)(Saylor, J., concurring).
Justice CASTILLE and Justice NEWMAN join this concurring opinion.
. I note that jurisdictions interpreting virtually identical constitutional requirements have employed a single-subject test and examined the interdependence of the proposed constitutional changes in determining the necessity for separate votes. See, e.g., Korte v. Bayless, 199 Ariz. 173 , 16 P.3d 200, 203-05 (2001) (explaining a "common-purpose formulation” to inquire into whether the proposed amendments are sufficiently related to "constitute a consistent and workable whole on the general topic embraced”); Clark v. State Canvassing Bd., 119 N.M. 12 , 888 P.2d 458, 462 (1995) (applying a "rational linchpin” of interdependence test); Sears v. State, 232 Ga. 547 , 208 S.E.2d 93, 100 (1974) (inquiring into whether all of the proposed changes "are germane to the accomplishment of a single objective”) (quotations and citations omitted); Fugina v. Donovan, 259 Minn. 35, 104 N.W.2d 911, 914 (1960) (upholding separate propositions that, although they could have been submitted separately, were rationally related to a single purpose, plan, or subject).