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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [First Page] [135], (1) Lines: 0 to 64 ——— 1.0pt PgVar ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [135], (1) chapter seven The Constitution: Provisions and Politics A constitution . . . requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated. Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819 All affidavits of Registration shall be made and executed in quadruplicate, the original and each copy of a distinctively different color. Each form shall be printed at the top thereof with the word “Original,” “Duplicate,” “Triplicate,” or “Quadruplicate,” as the case may be. . . . The forms shall be bound together in books or pads and each set of copies shall be capable of being detached from the book or pad and inserted and locked into the Registration Record Files. Arkansas constitution, amendment 51 The winds of change that produced so many modifications in Arkansas politics in recent decades also generated an intense period of attempted constitutional reform. On four separate occasions between 1968 and 1995, machinery was established to replace the existing constitution, written in 1874, with a new one that was more appropriate to contemporary circumstances and needs. Since none of these efforts succeeded, Arkansas still operates under a constitution better designed to prevent the recurrence of Reconstruction than to enable an early-twenty-first-century government to perform effectively. In that sense, the more things change, the more they seem to remain the same. Still, the constitutional picture is not a thoroughly bleak one. The constitution itself is one of the most democratic in the nation and is one of the most majoritarian components of Arkansas’s political system. Some of the most obstructionist provisions of the 1874 document have recently been 136 The Constitution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [136], (2) Lines: 64 to ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TE [136], (2) removed or revised, and contemporary officeholders have devised means to accommodate themselves to much of what remains. what caused the constitution Like all constitutions, Arkansas’s is both a formal, legal document establishing the rights of the people and the basic structure and powers of government and a political document reflecting the particular circumstances that produced it. Arkansas has had five constitutions, each of which, as Ralph C. Barnhart has noted, was “born out of some kind of crisis— statehood, civil war, military occupation, Reconstruction, and the reaction to Reconstruction.”1 The 1836 constitution was the necessary qualification for statehood. It was fairly brief and straightforward, using the U.S. Constitution as its model but with provisions tailored to Arkansas’s frontier circumstances. It was amended only three times in its twenty-five years of existence. In fact, it was changed very little by the convention that met in 1861 to frame a second state constitution, one appropriate for admission to the Confederacy. The framers simply substituted Confederate States of America for United States of America and provided additional safeguards to the institution of slavery. The third constitution, adopted in 1864 under military occupation, was another minor revision of the original document, with the significant exceptions that slavery was abolished and renewed allegiance to the United States proclaimed. The fourth constitution, the so-called Carpetbag Constitution of 1868, deserves a little more attention, since it was in opposition to many of its provisions , and specifically to the regime that operated under its provisions, that the fifth and present constitution was written in 1874. Under the Reconstruction Act of 1867, existing southern state governments were declared illegal. No such state could reenter the Union until a new constitution, conforming to the federal Constitution, was approved by Congress. Hence, a constitutional convention (consisting of only nine native Arkansans, three of whom had been slaves) drew up a document that extended the suffrage to African Americans, disfranchised former Confederates, eliminated all distinctions based on race, and established a system of legislative apportionment that favored counties with large African American populations. Also, reflecting both the semimilitary character of the government and the absence of cooperative local organizations, the constitution strongly centralized power: the governor...

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