North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger (R) declared that an initiative sponsored by North Dakota for Term Limits failed to qualify for the November ballot. The initiative would have enacted term limits in North Dakota for the governor and state legislators.
The measure would have limited the governor to serving two terms and would have limited state legislators to serving eight years in the state House and eight years in the state Senate. A member of the House or Senate would not have been able to serve a term or remaining portion of a term if it would have caused the legislator to have served a cumulative time of more than eight years in the chamber. The measure would have only applied to individuals elected after the amendment was approved. The measure would have provided that the provisions of the amendment could only be amended by citizen initiative petitions and not by the state legislature.
In North Dakota, the governor and lawmakers each serve four-year terms, with no limit on the number of terms that may be served. According to the Associated Press, “more than 60 current lawmakers have served eight or more years. Two Republicans, Sen. Ray Holmberg, of Grand Forks, and Rep. Bob Martinson, of Bismarck, have each served more than 40 years.” As of 2022, 15 states had term limits on state legislators: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. As of 2022, North Dakota was one of 14 states that did not limit governors’ terms.
