All four constitutional amendments on March 29th ballot go down in defeat

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Louisiana voters rejected all four Constitutional amendments on Saturday’s ballot. It’s a political defeat for Governor Jeff Landry, who pushed for Amendment 2, telling voters it would make the state more business-friendly. But John Couvillon of JMC Analytics and Polling says the governor didn’t start campaigning for the amendment until the week of early voting.

“You have to be able to give time for your message to sink in,” Couvillon said. ” If you are just starting to rev up your messaging on the week of early voting, not only are you missing the early voters, but you’re not having enough time to get to the election day voters either.”

Constitutional Amendment Two was born in last November’s tax reform special session. It sought to make major changes to Article Seven that included lowering the maximum income tax rate, limiting annual budget increases, and making it harder to approve new tax breaks.

But Couvillon says the governor and Republican lawmakers took too big of a swipe at changing the state’s tax code.

“In other words perhaps incremental changes would have been more advisable as opposed to what appears to be trying to replace a whole section of the constitution in an overlong amendment,” Couvillon said.

Amendment Two faced opposition from conservatives over concerns it would weaken constitutional protections for property tax exemptions that religious groups and nonprofits rely on. Couvillon also says Democrats were energized to vote against it as they do not like the fast-moving agendas from both Republican President Donald Trump and Landry.

“You have heightened Democratic anger, which in the context of a Democratic voter turnout of 15-20 percent, that heightened Democratic anger could matter,” Couvillon said.

In a statement, Landry blames far-left liberals for the amendment failing to pass. The governor says he will continue to fight to make generational changes for Louisiana to succeed.

All four constitutional amendments failed to pass with about 65 percent of voters voting no.