Curious Iowa: Why can’t Iowans start the process to amend our state constitution?

In three of Iowa’s neighbor states, residents initiated a process that will end with them voting in the Nov. 5 election on whether to enshrine the right to an abortion in their respective state constitutions.

Similar votes are taking place because of citizen-led efforts in five other states across the country, according to KFF, a nonprofit health care news and advocacy organization.

Iowans have no such option.

Cedar Rapids resident Lee Clancey wrote to Curious Iowa — a Gazette series that answers questions about the state, its people and our culture — with a question she already knows the answer to. Clancey, who was mayor of the City of Five Seasons from 1996 to 2002, suggested that Curious Iowa take on a question she’s heard Iowans ask in recent years.

“Why is it that Iowans cannot submit petitions to put abortion rights on a ballot?” Clancey asked. “With polls showing over 60 percent of Iowans believing women should be free to make their own reproductive health care decisions, it is wrong that voters are not allowed to weigh in on this issue.”

The answer is very simple: Because the Iowa Constitution does not allow it.

And the reason why the Iowa Constitution does not allow citizen ballot initiatives appears to boil down to little more than timing.

How does it work in Iowa?

There are 24 U.S. states that allow for citizen-led ballot initiatives, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In those 24 states, citizens can initiate the process of amending their state’s constitution.

Typically, the process requires citizens to acquire a prescribed number of signatures, and then the proposed constitutional amendment goes on the ballot for a statewide election.

There are some states in which citizens get signatures for a proposed amendment and then submit that proposal to the state’s legislature, which then votes on whether to adopt it.

That leaves 26 states, including Iowa, without a citizen-led ballot initiative.

There are two ways to amend the Iowa Constitution. Both procedures are laid out in Article 10 of the founding document.

The primary option for amending the Iowa Constitution starts with the Iowa Legislature, also referred to as the Iowa General Assembly.

State lawmakers can propose a constitutional amendment, which must pass twice in sessions separated by a general election. In other words, a proposed constitutional amendment passed in either the 2023 or 2024 sessions would need to be passed again no sooner than the 2025 session, after the 2024 election.

Once a proposed constitutional amendment passes two General Assemblies, it is put to Iowa voters in a general election. Iowa voters are asked whether to adopt the proposal as an amendment to the Iowa Constitution.

A second option is via a constitutional convention. At the start of each decade, Iowa voters are asked on the general election ballot, “Shall there be a convention to revise the Constitution, and propose amendment or amendments to same?”

If Iowans vote to hold a constitutional convention, members of the Iowa Legislature elect delegates to conduct such a convention, during which the delegates would propose constitutional amendments. Those proposed amendments go back to the people, who vote on whether to adopt them.

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Why didn’t Iowa’s founders choose citizen ballot initiatives?

The answer may be nothing more than timing.

Citizen ballot initiatives became popular during the Progressive Era, which was roughly around the turn of the 20th century. Britannica describes the Progressive movement as a time of “strengthening the national government and addressing people’s economic, social, and political demands.”

The Iowa Constitution was written in 1844, 1846, and 1857, well before the Progressive Era.

All 24 states with citizen ballot initiatives approved those measures in 1898 or later.

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“It’s a feature that a lot of states adopted in the Progressive movement in the early 1900s and Iowa just never did,” said Todd Pettys, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Iowa.

“The easiest explanation for why we don’t have a popular initiative is our constitution predates when popular initiatives became a thing,” said Allan Vestal, a professor at Drake University Law School. “It is bound to the history and timing of when we adopted our constitution.”

The Iowa Constitution could be amended to allow for citizen ballot initiatives. But, Vestal noted, that would require state lawmakers to cede that authority to voters.

Giving voters a more direct line to the Constitution

Like Clancey, who asked the question, both Pettys and Vestal noted abortion as an issue that illustrates the differences between how states amend their constitutions.

Republican majorities in the Iowa House and Iowa Senate, along with Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds passed a new state law that bans abortions once cardiac activity can be detected, which is usually around the sixth week of pregnancy, often before the parent is aware of the pregnancy.

While the law was passed by a governor and legislative majorities voted into their positions by Iowans, the new state abortion restriction is an unpopular law: 59 percent of Iowans said they oppose the new law, while just 37 percent said they support it, according to Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll taken earlier this month.

In that same poll, 64 percent of Iowans — a new high in the 16 years the poll has asked the question — said they believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

“It is frustrating when you can’t do a popular initiative on something like abortion policy, but it’s just not something that we’ve set the constitutional predicate for,” Vestal said.

Prior to this year, residents in two states — Ohio and Michigan — initiated and then voted to approve ballot measures that enshrined abortion rights in their states’ constitutions. Abortion-related measures were initiated by legislatures in four other states, and voters favored the side of abortion access in all four, including in conservative-leaning states Kentucky and Kansas.

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This year, South Dakota voters initiated a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to an abortion through the end of the second trimester, and voters in Missouri initiated a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee the right to an abortion up to viability, which is roughly around the 24th week of pregnancy.

Nebraska has competing citizen-led initiatives on the ballot this year: one would amend the state constitution to guarantee the right to an abortion until viability, while another would amend the constitution to ban abortions in the second and third trimesters.

Citizens in five more states — Montana, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and Florida — initiated proposed constitutional amendments guaranteeing the right to an abortion and will vote on them in November.

There also will be similar votes thanks to legislative-initiated proposals in New York and Maryland.

How many times has Iowa’s Constitution been amended?

There have been 49 amendments to the Iowa Constitution. The most recent was approved by voters in the 2022 general election. That amendment enshrined gun ownership rights into the Iowa Constitution with language that is stronger even than the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The amendment reads: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”

In November, Iowa voters will have two constitutional amendments on their ballot. One is about the gubernatorial line of succession in the event an Iowa governor resigns, dies or is removed from office. The other would give 17-year-olds permission to vote in primary elections if they will be 18 by the general election.

Iowa voters have not chosen to initiate a constitutional convention since that option was added to the Iowa Constitution with the 22nd Amendment in 1964.

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Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com