From Newsday:

Tuesday’s ballot in New Jersey asked voters to decide whether to eliminate insensitive phrasing in the state constitution that characterizes people with disabilities as “idiots” and “insane.”

The offensive language, adopted in the constitution in 1844, is aimed at barring people with limited mental capacity from voting: “No idiot or insane person shall enjoy the right of suffrage.”

At least seven other states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico and Ohio — have the words “idiot” or “insane” in their constitutions to define who can vote.

New York’s El Diario endorsed the change, quoting from the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill.

Calling people with various mental and physical disabilities “idiots” or “insane” is cruel and offensive. No one should do it and our New Jersey constitution certainly shouldn’t lend legitimacy to anyone who does use those terms to describe disabled people.

An endorsement also came from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 8:18 pm and is filed under language, law, voting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post