2011 Liberian constitutional referendum
Election
A referendum to amend the Constitution of Liberia was held on 23 August 2011. Voters chose whether to ratify four amendments regarding judge tenure, elections scheduling, presidential candidate requirements and the electoral system. The National Elections Commission of Liberia (NEC) oversaw the referendum.
Following the referendum, the NEC announced on 31 August that none of the four amendments had been ratified by the necessary two-thirds of voters. Unity Party Chairman Varney Sherman and Senator Fredrick Cherue of River Gee County later filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the NEC's certification of the defeat of Proposition 4 regarding a change from absolute majority to simple majority in all non-presidential elections, arguing that the NEC had unconstitutionally included invalid ballots in its computation of the results. The Supreme Court ruled on 20 September that the NEC had erred in its calculation of the vote and declared that Proposition 4 had passed.
Background
Both houses of the Legislature of Liberia passed a series of four amendments to the current Constitution of Liberia on 17 August 2010. Per Article 91(a) of the Constitution, the amendments must be ratified by two-thirds of registered voters in a referendum held not sooner than one year after the passage of the amendments in the Legislature. Though all four amendments will be voted on in the same referendum, Article 91(b) requires that each amendment be individually approved by the voters.
Initially, NEC Chairman James M. Fromayan announced that the referendum would not be held before the scheduled presidential and legislative elections on 11 October 2011, stating that the estimated cost of holding both elections in close proximity would be prohibitive.
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This entry incorporates text from “2011 Liberian constitutional referendum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.