New Jersey voters reject ‘idiot’ language
November 7th, 2007From Bloomberg.com:
Voters in New Jersey
… passed a revision to language in the constitution describing people who would be denied the right to vote. The amendment replaces the phrase ‘idiot or insane person” with “a person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting.”
Senate President Richard Codey, a mental-health advocate who sponsored the language change, said the measure would “erase more than 150 years of discrimination in New Jersey’s constitution.”
The words “idiot” or “insane” remain in the voter eligibility language of constitutions in at least seven other states. See earlier post here.
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on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 5:53 am and is filed under language, law, voting.
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