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Cindy Havey, League of Women Voters Buffalo/Niagara board member, encourages a Buffalo State student to vote. |
By Rylee Shott
With the election coming up on Nov. 5, New York voters should be aware of Proposition One that will be located on the back of the ballot.
Proposition One is the New York State Equal Rights Amendment. The goal of this amendment is to change section 11 of article 1 of the Constitution to include gender, gender identity, health care choices, age, and disability to the State Constitution. The Amendment is not proposing new laws but enforcing and protecting the laws that are already in place in New York.
“These things are already in New York law, but what this will do is put those rights into the Constitution,” Cindy Havey, League of Women Voters Buffalo/Niagara board member said.
Laws can be easily changed whereas the State Constitution is a lot harder to change.
The amendment has plenty of support but, there are still plenty of people who oppose the amendment.
“People are afraid that it [the amendment] could lead to changes in their lives they are not comfortable with. Opponents seem to me are to be focusing on the possibility of what the constitution amendment could lead to, not necessarily what the Constitution says,” Blair Horner, executive director of New York Public Interest Research Group said.
There are some concerns with how people will understand the wording of the amendment.
“The legislature passed a law saying that ballot initiatives had to be written in accessible language where someone with a sixth-grade education could understand it. And so, they say that this initiative is written for someone with a fifteenth-grade education. It is written in a way that is very hard to understand,” Ruth Goldman, Women and Gender Studies professor at Buffalo State University, said.
Havey and the League in Buffalo Niagara have been getting the word out at Buffalo State University and Elmwood Village Farmers Market to spread the word about the amendment.
NYPIRG is working to inform the young voters on Buffalo State, Canisius and other campuses in Buffalo on how to vote and what will be on the ballot.
“We are going to educate voters more generally, particularly young voters, on how the system works so that they can cast their ballots,” Horner said.
The fight for equal rights has been an ongoing battle within the United States for decades. In New York the idea of amending the constitution to guarantee more equal rights has been in the conversation since 2019.
“I think it is very surprising to most people that we don’t already have this amendment to the Constitution, especially an Amendment protecting women,” Goldman said.
