Member station KUT recently took a closer look at the confusion surrounding the Texas Constitution. The mystery lies in the fact that, even after 180 years, Texas still doesn't technically have a constitution in effect. That’s because, while Texas has had many versions of its constitution, the state has never formally recognized any of them. Texas seemed to have finally enacted one in 1876, over 30 years after joining the United States. But through a confused and jumbled process, Texans ended up ratifying several versions of the document.
The Spanish, German, and Bohemian translations differed from one another. And even the English versions have inconsistent wording and punctuation that alters the meaning.
To this day, no Texas court has ruled on which of the six total variants is the unifying version of the document.