Oregon — Measure 48 (1996)

Overview

Oregon voters considered Measure 48 at the November 5, 1996 general election.

The voter-initiated constitutional amendment, titled the Congressional Term Limits Act of 1996, proposed adding new Sections 22–32 to Article II of the Oregon Constitution. It created a state-authored ballot-instruction architecture directed toward a specified federal Congressional Term Limits Amendment.

The specified amendment established a three-term Eligibility Boundary for the United States House of Representatives and a two-term Eligibility Boundary for the United States Senate. Upon ratification, a person who had previously held or then held a House seat could serve no more than two additional House terms; a person who had previously held or then held a Senate seat could serve no more than one additional Senate term. The amendment imposed no ratification deadline and specified ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

Measure 48 directed Oregon officials toward the Article V institutions possessing the relevant constitutional functions. Oregon’s Members of Congress were instructed to use their delegated powers to pass the specified amendment. Members of the Oregon Legislative Assembly were instructed to advance a prescribed Article V application asking Congress to call a convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution and, if Congress later proposed the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment, to support its ratification.

Around those instruments, the proposal prescribed separate conduct schedules for Oregon’s congressional delegation and state legislators, a Term Limits Pledge for nonincumbent candidates, Secretary of State determinations, expedited Oregon Supreme Court review, state-authored ballot designations, and stage-specific exit conditions.

The proposed governing sequence was:

specified federal amendment → voter instruction or candidate pledge → prescribed conduct or pledge response → Secretary of State determination → judicial review where invoked → state-authored ballot designation

The congressional design therefore operated as a:

Ballot-Instruction Mechanism

Indirect · State-Authored · Office-Specific

Oregon voters rejected Measure 48:

For: 624,771 — 48.21%

Against: 671,095 — 51.79%

The rejection ended the proposal at the electoral-authorization stage. Its specified amendment, Article V instructions, conduct schedules, candidate pledge, administrative determinations, judicial-review provisions, ballot designations, and regulatory exit provisions remained proposed and never became operative.

Jurisdiction and Scope

Jurisdiction: Oregon

Measure: Measure 48 (1996)

Formal title: Congressional Term Limits Act of 1996

Form: Voter-initiated constitutional amendment

Proposed governing text: New Sections 22–32 of Article II of the Oregon Constitution

Election date: November 5, 1996

Electoral outcome: Rejected

Federal offices implicated: United States House of Representatives; United States Senate

State offices implicated: Oregon Legislative Assembly

Actors implicated: Oregon’s Members of Congress; members of the Oregon Legislative Assembly; incumbent and nonincumbent candidates for affected federal and state legislative offices; Oregon Secretary of State; Oregon Supreme Court

Proposed administrative authority: Oregon Secretary of State

Proposed judicial-review authority: Oregon Supreme Court

Institutional object: Advancement of a specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment through congressional proposal, a prescribed state-legislative Article V Convention application, and potential state ratification if the specified amendment were submitted to the states

Proposed electoral output: State-authored ballot designations tied to prescribed legislative conduct or a nonincumbent candidate’s response to the Term Limits Pledge

Measure 48 addressed three constitutionally assigned Article V functions through actor-specific instructions: congressional proposal of the specified amendment, an Oregon Legislative Assembly application for a Convention, and potential Oregon legislative ratification if the amendment were later submitted to the states.

The proposed state system connected those instructions to prescribed conduct, candidate pledges, Secretary of State determinations, ballot designations, and expedited Oregon Supreme Court review.

Architecture and Classification

Measure 48 proposed a state-administered ballot-instruction architecture organized around advancement of a specified federal Congressional Term Limits Amendment.

Ballot-Instruction Mechanism

Indirect · State-Authored · Office-Specific

Status: Proposed · Rejected

Article V supplied the constitutional functions. Measure 48 prescribed conduct for the Oregon officials occupying the institutions assigned those functions.

For Oregon’s Members of Congress:

specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment → congressional proposal activity

For members of the Oregon Legislative Assembly:

prescribed Article V application → state-legislative Convention-application activity

If the specified amendment were later submitted to the states:

submitted Congressional Term Limits Amendment → Oregon legislative ratification activity

The electoral-accountability architecture then applied separate pathways to incumbent and nonincumbent candidates.

For incumbents:

prescribed official conduct → Secretary of State determination → judicial review where invoked → state-authored ballot designation

For nonincumbents:

prescribed Term Limits Pledge → pledge response → Secretary of State determination → judicial review where invoked → state-authored ballot designation

The state supplied the conduct criteria, administrative determination, prescribed ballot language, and review process. The proposed three-term House and two-term Senate Eligibility Boundaries remained dependent upon amendment of the United States Constitution.

Oregon voters rejected Measure 48 before the proposed architecture became operative.

Specified Amendment and Transition Architecture

Section 23 supplied the federal constitutional amendment that Measure 48 instructed Oregon officials to advance.

The measure introduced it as the:

Congressional Term Limits Amendment

The prescribed amendment stated:

Section A. No person shall serve in the office of U.S. Representative for more than three terms, but upon ratification of the Term Limits amendment no person who has held the office of U.S. Representative or who then holds the office shall serve for more than two additional terms.

Section B. No person shall serve in the office of U.S. Senator for more than two terms, but upon ratification of the Term Limits amendment no person who has held the office of U.S. Senator or who then holds the office shall serve more than one additional term.

Section C. This article shall have no time limit within which it must be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States.

Eligibility Architecture

Regime: Endpoint System

Mechanism: Lifetime Exhaustion

House Eligibility Boundary: Three terms

Senate Eligibility Boundary: Two terms

The amendment used ratification as the transition boundary while preserving a defined quantity of additional service for persons who had previously held or then held congressional office.

For the House:

prior or current House service at ratification → eligibility for no more than two additional House terms

For the Senate:

prior or current Senate service at ratification → eligibility for no more than one additional Senate term

The amendment supplied no separate partial-term counting rule. Section C left the ratification period open-ended and specified ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

The specified amendment therefore supplied both the proposed federal Eligibility Architecture and the substantive standard against which Measure 48 prescribed congressional and state-legislative conduct.

Prescribed Article V Application

Section 24 prescribed the Article V application that Measure 48 instructed the Oregon Legislative Assembly to make to Congress.

The application stated:

“We, the People and Legislature of the State of Oregon, due to our desire to establish term limits on the Congress of the United States, hereby make application to Congress, pursuant to our power under Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution, to call a convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution.”

The prescribed text identified congressional term limits as Oregon’s purpose while using the broader constitutional formulation “a convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution.”

Section 25 instructed each Oregon legislator to use all delegated powers to pass the Section 24 application. It separately instructed legislators to ratify the Congressional Term Limits Amendment specified in Section 23 if Congress later proposed that amendment and submitted it to the states.

The two state-legislative stages were therefore:

prescribed Article V application → Oregon legislative advancement of the Convention application

and, conditionally:

Congressional proposal and submission of the specified amendment → Oregon legislative ratification activity

The Convention-application and ratification stages depended upon separate Article V events and remained institutionally distinct.

Prescribed Legislative Conduct

Measure 48 connected its instructions to separate conduct schedules for members of the Oregon Legislative Assembly and Oregon’s congressional delegation.

Members of the Oregon Legislative Assembly

Section 26 prescribed nine criteria governing state-legislative conduct. The incumbent ballot designation would apply to a state senator or representative who:

• failed to vote for the prescribed Article V application when brought to a vote;

• failed to second the application when a second was required;

• failed to support votes advancing the application through a committee or subcommittee on which the legislator served;

• failed to bring the application before the full legislative body when another legislator had not done so;

• failed to oppose delay, tabling, or other action preventing a full-body vote on the application;

• failed to ensure that votes on the application were recorded and made available to the public;

• failed to oppose any change, addition, or modification to the prescribed application;

• failed to vote for the Section 23 Congressional Term Limits Amendment if it were submitted to the states for ratification; or

• failed to vote against another term-limit amendment if such an amendment were submitted to the states for ratification.

The state-legislative conduct schedule therefore covered advancement and preservation of the prescribed Convention application and, at a later conditional stage, ratification activity concerning a submitted congressional term-limit amendment.

Oregon’s Members of Congress

Section 27 instructed each member of Oregon’s congressional delegation to use all delegated powers to pass the Congressional Term Limits Amendment specified in Section 23.

Section 28 prescribed eight criteria governing congressional conduct. The incumbent ballot designation would apply to a United States Representative or Senator who:

• failed to vote for the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment when brought to a vote;

• failed to second the amendment when a second was required and otherwise unavailable;

• failed to bring the amendment before the full legislative body when another legislator had not done so;

• failed to support votes advancing the amendment through a committee or subcommittee on which the member served;

• failed to oppose delay, tabling, or other action preventing a full-body vote on the specified amendment;

• failed to vote against another term-limit proposal;

• sponsored or cosponsored a constitutional amendment or law proposing term limits other than those contained in the specified amendment; or

• failed to ensure that votes on the specified amendment were recorded and made available to the public.

The two conduct pathways were:

prescribed Article V application and potential later ratification → Oregon legislative conduct → state-administered accountability

specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment → congressional conduct → state-administered accountability

The conduct schedules supplied the substantive criteria later used by the Secretary of State in determining whether the incumbent ballot designation would apply.

Stage-Specific Release Conditions

Measure 48 tied its ballot-designation provisions to the constitutional-maintenance work each provision addressed.

Oregon Legislative Assembly — Convention Application

For the Section 26(2)(a)–(g) criteria governing advancement and preservation of the prescribed Article V application, the incumbent designation would cease once Oregon had made the application and the application had not been withdrawn.

The resulting exit condition was:

Oregon makes prescribed Article V application + application remains unwithdrawn → Convention-application designation criteria cease

Oregon Legislative Assembly — Ratification

For the Section 26(2)(h)–(i) criteria governing later ratification activity, the designation would cease once Oregon had ratified the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment or that amendment had become part of the United States Constitution.

The later conditional exit was:

specified amendment submitted to states → Oregon ratification or federal constitutional adoption → ratification-related designation criteria cease

Oregon’s Members of Congress

Section 29 provided that the congressional-incumbent designation would cease once the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment was before the states for ratification or had become part of the United States Constitution.

specified amendment before states for ratification or incorporated into U.S. Constitution → congressional-incumbent designation ceases

System-Wide Repeal

Section 31 supplied the final regulatory endpoint. Once the Congressional Term Limits Amendment specified in Section 23 became part of the United States Constitution, Sections 22–32 of the proposed Oregon constitutional amendment automatically would be repealed.

The complete architecture therefore linked continuing state regulation to unfinished constitutional-maintenance work and supplied progressively terminating stages as that work reached defined endpoints.

Candidate Pledge and Ballot Designations

Measure 48 prescribed separate ballot treatment for incumbents and nonincumbent candidates for the United States Congress and Oregon Legislative Assembly.

Incumbent Designation

Sections 26 and 28 required the following information to appear adjacent to an incumbent candidate’s name when the applicable conduct criteria were satisfied:

“DISREGARDED VOTERS’ INSTRUCTION ON TERM LIMITS”

The designation applied on primary, general, and special-election ballots.

For state legislators, the governing conduct concerned advancement and preservation of the prescribed Article V application and potential later ratification activity.

For Members of Congress, the governing conduct concerned advancement of the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment.

Nonincumbent Term Limits Pledge

Section 30 permitted a nonincumbent candidate for United States Representative, United States Senator, state representative, or state senator to sign a prescribed “Term Limits Pledge” each time the candidate filed for office.

The exact pledge stated:

“I support congressional term limits and pledge to use all of my legislative powers to enact the proposed Congressional Term Limits Amendment set forth in the Congressional Term Limits Act of 1996. If elected, I pledge to act and vote in such a way that the information “DISREGARDED VOTERS’ INSTRUCTION ON TERM LIMITS” will not appear next to my name.”

The pledge form was to provide space for the candidate’s signature and the date signed.

A nonincumbent candidate who declined to sign the pledge would receive:

“DECLINED TO PLEDGE TO SUPPORT TERM LIMITS”

The pledge continued to be offered until the United States Constitution had been amended to limit United States Senators to two terms and United States Representatives to three terms.

The proposed ballot interface therefore used two state-authored judgments:

incumbent conduct → “DISREGARDED VOTERS’ INSTRUCTION ON TERM LIMITS”

nonincumbent refusal of prescribed pledge → “DECLINED TO PLEDGE TO SUPPORT TERM LIMITS”

Administration, Judicial Review, and Severability

Section 30 assigned the Oregon Secretary of State responsibility for determining whether either prescribed ballot designation would appear beside a candidate’s name.

Secretary of State Determinations

For incumbent Members of Congress, the Secretary of State was required to make the determination early enough to permit orderly printing of primary and general-election ballots and completion of the measure’s judicial-review process. The determination covered conduct during the member’s current term and qualifying conduct from a concluded term occurring after the previous determination.

For incumbent state legislators, the determination was due no later than 30 days after the end of the regular legislative session following each general election and was based on legislative action during the preceding regular session.

For nonincumbent candidates, the determination was due no later than five days after the filing deadline for the office.

The Secretary of State was also required to consider timely submitted public comments before making the designation determination.

The administrative sequence was:

prescribed conduct or pledge response → Secretary of State determination → judicial review where invoked → ballot designation

Oregon Supreme Court Review

A Secretary of State determination omitting either prescribed designation could be challenged by any elector. An elector seeking review was required to appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court as an original action within five days or waive the right to appeal.

In that proceeding, the Secretary of State bore the burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence that the candidate had satisfied the requirements supporting omission of the designation.

A determination placing either designation beside a candidate’s name could be challenged by the candidate. A candidate seeking review was required to appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court as an original action within five days or waive the right to appeal.

In that proceeding, the candidate bore the burden of demonstrating by clear and convincing evidence that the designation should be omitted.

For an appeal from omission, the Supreme Court was directed to issue its decision within 120 days.

For an appeal from inclusion, the Court was directed to issue its decision no later than 61 days before the election.

Severability

Section 32 supplied a severability rule. If a court of competent jurisdiction held any portion, clause, or phrase of the proposed amendment invalid or unconstitutional, the remaining portions, clauses, and phrases were to remain in full force and effect.

Because Measure 48 was rejected, no Secretary of State determination, public-comment process, designation appeal, or severability question arose under these provisions.

Electoral Outcome

Oregon voters considered Measure 48 at the November 5, 1996 general election.

The official ballot title was:

Amends Constitution: Instructs State, Federal Legislators to Vote for Congressional Term Limits

Statewide Result

For: 624,771 — 48.21%

Against: 671,095 — 51.79%

Outcome: Rejected

The statewide vote supplied one electoral disposition for the complete proposed constitutional amendment.

Measure 48 presented the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment, Article V instructions, legislative-conduct schedules, candidate pledge, ballot designations, Secretary of State administration, Oregon Supreme Court review, stage-specific release conditions, automatic repeal, and severability as components of a single proposal.

The electoral sequence was:

initiative submission → statewide vote → rejection

The rejection withheld authorization for the proposed Oregon constitutional architecture. No provision of Measure 48 became operative.

Constitutional Position

Measure 48 ended at the electoral-authorization stage when Oregon voters rejected it on November 5, 1996. The proposed Sections 22–32 therefore remained outside the Oregon Constitution, and their instruction, pledge, administrative, judicial-review, ballot-designation, release, and repeal provisions remained proposed architecture.

Preceding Oregon Architecture

Oregon voters had approved Measure 3 in 1992, placing three-term House and two-term Senate Eligibility Boundaries directly in the Oregon Constitution.

In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995), the United States Supreme Court established the federal constitutional boundary governing state-created qualifications for membership in Congress.

Measure 48 then placed Oregon’s three-term House and two-term Senate objective within a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution and organized state action around the Article V institutions responsible for proposal, Convention application, and ratification. Chief Petitioner Paul Farago was among the proponents who advanced Measure 48 as Oregon’s post-Thornton congressional term-limit initiative.

The Oregon sequence was:

1992 state constitutional congressional Eligibility Boundaries → 1995 federal qualifications boundary → 1996 proposed federal-amendment instruction architecture

Later Federal Ballot-Designation Boundary

In Cook v. Gralike (2001), the United States Supreme Court addressed Missouri’s enacted system of state-authored congressional ballot designations and held that the challenged ballot labels exceeded state authority under the Elections Clause.

Measure 48 had already ended through voter rejection. Cook therefore supplies later federal constitutional authority relevant to the type of congressional ballot information Oregon proposed while leaving Measure 48 itself as an unimplemented design.

Structural Significance

Oregon Measure 48 makes observable a migration in constitutional pathway following Thornton.

Federal Amendment as the Eligibility Architecture

The proposal located the three-term House and two-term Senate Eligibility Boundaries in a specified amendment to the United States Constitution. Oregon’s proposed constitutional provisions then prescribed state-level instructions, conduct standards, candidate pledges, administrative determinations, judicial review, and electoral information directed toward advancement of that federal objective.

The resulting structure was:

federal Eligibility Architecture → Article V constitutional-maintenance activity → state-administered electoral accountability

A Specified Amendment as the Conduct Standard

Measure 48 supplied the exact federal amendment against which congressional and state-legislative conduct would be evaluated.

Its substantive standard included:

• a three-term House Eligibility Boundary;

• a two-term Senate Eligibility Boundary;

• eligibility for no more than two additional House terms for persons who had previously held or then held House office at ratification;

• eligibility for no more than one additional Senate term for persons who had previously held or then held Senate office at ratification;

• an open-ended ratification period; and

• ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.

The proposed ballot-accountability system therefore rested on a defined constitutional objective specifying the governing duration, transition, and ratification architecture.

Article V Functions and Stage-Specific Accountability

Measure 48 directed officials toward three constitutionally assigned Article V functions: congressional proposal, state-legislative Convention application, and potential state ratification.

Each stage carried actor-specific conduct criteria and its own regulatory endpoint. Completion of the prescribed Convention application released one group of state-legislative criteria; submission or adoption of the specified amendment released others; incorporation of the amendment into the United States Constitution triggered automatic repeal of the entire Oregon system.

The architecture therefore tied continuing state electoral accountability to the completion of defined constitutional-maintenance tasks.

Electoral Disposition

Oregon voters rejected the complete architecture before implementation.

The record consequently preserves a fully specified constitutional design and a statewide electoral judgment on that integrated proposal while supplying no administrative operation under the proposed system.

Sources

State Sources

State of Oregon — 1996 General Election Voters’ Pamphlet, Volume 1: Measures
Official voter pamphlet containing the ballot title, explanatory statement, and complete text of Measure 48, including the specified Congressional Term Limits Amendment, prescribed Article V application, legislative-conduct criteria, Term Limits Pledge, ballot designations, Secretary of State administration, Oregon Supreme Court review, automatic repeal, and severability.

Oregon Secretary of State — November 5, 1996 General Election Official Results
Official statewide and county returns for Measure 48. Records 624,771 votes for and 671,095 votes against the proposal.

Oregon Secretary of State — Initiative, Referendum and Recall: 1902–2024
Official historical catalog of Oregon ballot measures, including the preceding 1992 congressional term-limit measure and Measure 48’s 1996 electoral disposition.

Federal Constitutional Authority

U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995)
Establishes the federal constitutional boundary against state-created qualifications for membership in Congress and supplies the constitutional setting for Oregon’s movement from a state congressional Eligibility Boundary to a federal-amendment pathway.

Cook v. Gralike, 531 U.S. 510 (2001)
Addresses a later enacted congressional ballot-instruction system using state-authored candidate designations and establishes the Elections Clause boundary relevant to the type of congressional ballot information proposed by Measure 48.

Questions for Further Exploration

• What did Oregon voters seek to accomplish by specifying three-term House and two-term Senate Eligibility Boundaries in a federal constitutional amendment while directing different Article V functions to Congress and the Oregon Legislative Assembly?

• Why did Measure 48 assign congressional proposal, state-legislative Convention application, and potential state ratification to different constitutional actors while connecting all three functions to a common state-administered accountability system?

• What did Oregon voters withhold when they rejected Measure 48: authorization of the complete Oregon instruction-and-accountability architecture, a judgment on the specified congressional term-limit objective, or only the integrated proposal presented on the ballot?

• How should the 1996 result be interpreted when one statewide vote encompassed the specified amendment, Article V instructions, candidate pledges, administrative determinations, judicial review, and ballot designations?

• If the electorate declined to authorize Measure 48’s standards for evaluating legislative conduct, what basis remained for judging later officials against those proposed standards?

• How does Oregon’s progression from voter approval of direct congressional Eligibility Boundaries in 1992, through Thornton, to rejection of the different Measure 48 architecture in 1996 complicate any inference about voter support for the underlying congressional term-limit objective?

• What does Measure 48 reveal about the distinction between communicating a constitutional preference to representatives and creating a state mechanism that evaluates how those representatives exercise constitutionally assigned functions?

• When voters decline to authorize the proposed accountability mechanism, how should subsequent questions of representative judgment, political accountability, and legitimacy be evaluated?

Related Pages

Congressional Term Limits
Defines the federal eligibility objective that Measure 48 sought to advance through a specified constitutional amendment and state-administered instruction architecture.

Oregon — Congressional Term Limits (1992–1995)
Provides the preceding Oregon architecture, tracing the movement from state-created congressional Eligibility Boundaries to the post-Thornton federal-amendment pathway.

Congressional Ballot Instruction Phase (1996–2000)
Places Measure 48 within the state ballot-instruction phase that joined specified congressional term-limit objectives, voter instruction, candidate pledges, and state-authored ballot information.

Worked Example — Cook v. Gralike (2001)
Carries the state-authored ballot-designation architecture forward to the later Elections Clause boundary established by the Supreme Court.

Worked Example — Institutional Response Sequence to Congressional Term-Limit Initiatives (1990–2001)
Locates Oregon’s progression from its 1992 congressional term-limit architecture through Thornton and Measure 48 within the broader institutional response sequence.