Anybody got an eraser and a pencil?

CARSON CITY — They moved the deadlines for this?

Nevada’s Legislature had to take an emergency step on Monday to extend the deadline for legislator’s bill introductions, one of the first hard deadlines of the session.

But it’s not just laws. Some lawmakers want to go even further, and amend Nevada’s founding document, the state constitution. And some of those amendments beg an important question: Really?

A number of conservatives in both Senate and Assembly decided it might be a good idea to enshrine the idea of requiring ID in order to vote in the state Constitution. There are at least three other bills on this subject (Assembly Bills 253, 266 and Senate Bill 169) but they would only change state law, not the Constitution.

If Senate Joint Resolution 15 were to pass the Legislature, it would need to be approved again in 2017 before going before the voters for approval in the November 2018 election.

Then there’s Senate Joint Resolution 14, a bid by state Sen. Don Gustavson and Assemblywoman Jill Dickman, both R-Sparks, which would prohibit the state or local governments in Nevada from “…creating, operating or maintaining or entering into a contract for the creation, operation or maintenance of a health insurance exchange.” Since Nevada already has a health-insurance exchange, this bill would erase it, and force Nevadans to use the federal government’s exchange instead.

(The bill could also end up hurting Nevadans, depending upon the outcome of the Supreme Court case in King v. Burwell, in which plaintiffs assert that only enrollees of state, but not federal, health-insurance exchanges are entitled to subsidies for their health care included in the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court’s ruling in that case is expected this summer.) It, too, would have to be approved again in 2017 before voters got a chance to have their say in 2018.

There are two proposed constitutional amendments to limit property taxes (Senate Joint Resolution 12 and Senate Joint Resolution 13), as well as a proposed amendment to enshrine the right hunt, trap and fish in the constitution as well. How have we managed for 150 years of hunting, trapping and fishing without that protection?

Hell, at this rate, we’re amending the Nevada Constitution so much, we won’t need the NRS anymore!

Today also saw an amendment to Senate Joint Resolution 3, a measure that would change the constitution to allow the governor to select a person to run as lieutenant governor, and campaign as a ticket, instead of independently electing both positions. Under the amendment, once the governor names his or her running mate, both candidates could accept campaign contributions.

That means instead of donating the maximum $10,000 to the candidate for governor, a corporation or individual could donate $15,000 to the ticket — $10,000 to the candidate for governor ($5,000 each for the primary and general elections) and $5,000 to the lieutenant governor (for the general election only, since there would no longer be a primary election for that office).

This would allow a particularly well-connected ticket to maximize fundraising during elections, instead of each candidate raising money separately for their individual offices. But it would also reduce the amount of money in the election overall since the lieutenant governor would not run in a primary and would be prohibited from raising money until he or she was named by the gubernatorial nominee of a political party, after the primary.

Oh, and several Democratic state senators, led by state Sen. Pat Spearman, D-North Las Vegas, are trying to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Yes, that Equal Rights Amendment, the one first proposed way back in 1923, that was finally passed by Congress in 1972 but that fell three states short of ratification. A total of 35 states ratified the amendment — 38 are required for adoption — although five of those states later rescinded their ratifications. A deadline imposed by Congress for adoption lapsed in June 1982, but some argue the deadline itself is irrelevant if enough states ratify the amendment.

Over in the Assembly, several conservative members want to make it harder — much harder — to raise taxes at the ballot box, as was proposed in 2014’s Education Initiative. Under Assembly Joint Resolution 8, any joint resolution seeking to raise taxes must get a two-thirds supermajority in order to proceed to the ballot. And in the case of a citizen initiative that qualifies for the ballot, a two-thirds supermajority in the general election would be required to raise taxes.

Currently, the Legislature is required to muster a two-thirds vote to raise taxes by statute. But a tax initiative would only require a simple majority of voters to pass. (The Education Initiative, ironically enough, failed by a vote of nearly 80 percent to 20 percent.)

Assemblyman Harvey Munford, D-Las Vegas, is the designated Don Quixote of the 2015 session, with his Assembly Joint Resolution 6, the nearly biennial effort to create a state lottery to fund education and senior citizen programs. An amendment removing the constitution’s prohibition on lotteries has been tried more than two dozen times over the years, without success.

The governor would get a line-item veto over appropriations bills under Assembly Joint Resolution 5, although a similar law on the federal level was struck down in 1998 as a violation of the Presentment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Nevada’s Constitution has a presentment clause nearly identical to the one in the U.S. Constitution. But governors in 44 of the 50 states have line-item veto powers.

And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, five conservative Assembly members want to call on Congress for a constitutional convention to draft amendments to the U.S. Constitution “…limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and limit the terms of office for its officers and members of Congress.”

Oh, come on, people! Isn’t tinkering with Nevada’s Constitution bad enough?