Tennessee Constitution and its amendments have a language problem | Opinion

It is great that Tennessee is one of the states that offers many days of early voting, making it more viable for many people to cast their ballots. There were still relatively long lines of people waiting to vote on the day I went, but the lines moved fairly quickly thanks to the patient guidance of poll workers. The wait time, however, could have been even shorter and more efficient if voters did not have to scroll down several pages of proposed constitutional amendments written in hyper-formal language full of redundancies and modifying clauses.

Directly after viewing the first page listing the candidates for governor, one had to go through one page after another citing different sections in the Tennessee Constitution in order to vote on whether to keep the old language unchanged or adopt a newly proposed language for four amendments, all of which were approved. It turns out that lawmakers are just as prone to infelicities of language as everyone else, but the consequences are far more serious in their case.

Shockingly, I discovered that slavery, according to Article I, Section 33 of the Tennessee Constitution, was still technically legal at the time of the November election due to the scope of ambiguity in the original phrasing, which states that “slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a person who has been duly convicted of crime, are forever prohibited in this State.” The new language in the amendment, which was approved, breaks it into two simpler sentences and removes the unfortunate wording to read: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.” That is a marked improvement.

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Not all amendments, however, are that short or direct. Wading through the verbiage of some of the other constitutional amendments that were proposed could be a mental workout. For example, Amendment 2 of Article 111, Section 13 — relating to the temporary exercise of the powers and duties of the governor’s office in case of the governor’s incapacity — is roughly 650 words, with one of the sentences exceeding 120 words in length. That is unconscionably long and can tax anyone’s ability to process the information to determine the exact meaning and intent.

Reading new material can be cognitively demanding, let alone when this task is done in a limited amount of time in a voting booth with dozens of people behind you waiting their turn to perform their civic duty. Any explanation of amendments provided for voting, therefore, should be as brief as possible with the emphasis more on clarity and directness rather than attempting to encompass every contingency. For the actual text of the amendments and the Tennessee Constitution itself, voters can go to the “GoVoteTn” website, where all the information is laid out in detail.

But here's the rub. When one takes the time to go to the text of the Tennessee Constitution itself, one is surprised to find many other unaddressed problems in its current framing. Apparently, the text is shot through with sexist “he-language” that explicitly assumes that the governor can only be a male: “He shall be at least thirty years of age … ” and “He shall have powers to grant reprieves and pardons … ” Nor does the discriminatory language stop at gender.

Amendment 4 deleted Article IX, Section 1, which prohibited “ministers of the gospel and priests of any denomination” from being eligible to hold a seat in either house of the Tennessee General Assembly. I can only assume from that old language fraught with Christian references that the prohibition applied only to Christian religious leaders, which can count as discrimination. In any case, there was no proposed amendment for Section 2, which declares that “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.” Such an exclusionary clause against non-theists clearly conflicts with the “no religious test” clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The root verb of amendment, “to amend,” means to change or update something for the better. When updating the language of the Tennessee Constitution and its amendments, adopting plain English and more inclusive language are steps in the right direction.

Dr. Mohammed Albakry is a professor of linguistics at Middle Tennessee State University.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Opinion: Tenn. Constitution, its amendments have a language problem