North Dakota

North Dakota has a large plural executive of statewide elected officials: the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the State Treasurer, the State Auditor, the Agriculture Commissioner, the Tax Commissioner, the Insurance Commissioner, the three-member Public Service Commission, and more. Since the 1960s the Governor and Lieutenant Governor have run together as a single ticket; most of the others are elected independently.

This crowded ballot is itself a legacy of the state’s populist, anti-concentration political tradition, the same impulse that produced its state-owned enterprises (below). The Governor appoints the heads of the executive agencies that aren’t separately elected, but shares the executive branch with a long roster of officers who answer to the voters.

The North Dakota Legislative Assembly is bicameral: a 47-seat State Senate and a 94-seat House of Representatives, with members of both chambers serving four-year terms. In 2022 voters adopted term limits, eight years per chamber, for the first time. It is a part-time, citizen legislature, paid mainly a daily rate while in session.

Its defining feature is how rarely it meets. North Dakota is one of only a handful of states with a biennial legislature: the Assembly convenes in regular session only in odd-numbered years and is capped at 80 legislative days across the two-year biennium. Lawmakers often hold a few days in reserve so they can return briefly if needed, but for most of any two-year period the Legislature is simply not in session.

A bill is introduced, referred to committee (North Dakota gives essentially every bill a public hearing), and, if it advances, voted on the floor of each chamber within the 80-day biennial window, with differences reconciled before final passage. The Governor can sign a bill, veto it, or let it become law, and holds a line-item veto over appropriations; a veto override takes two-thirds of each chamber.

North Dakota has strong direct democracy: citizens can enact statutes and propose constitutional amendments by initiative and overturn laws by referendum, tools rooted in the same early-1900s populist movement that shaped the state. And North Dakota is unique in election administration: it is the only state with no voter registration at all. Eligible residents simply appear at the polls with proof of identity and residence and cast a ballot, a system the state attributes to its tradition of small communities where neighbors knew one another.

The Governor appoints the heads of the non-elected agencies, proposes the budget, can call special sessions, holds emergency powers, wields a line-item veto, and holds the clemency power (with a Pardon Advisory Board advising). Since 2022 the Governor is capped at two terms (eight years), but the office still accumulates substantial influence, especially because the Legislature is out of session most of the time, leaving day-to-day governance to the executive branch.

The main internal checks are the unusually large field of independently elected statewide officers, the two-thirds override, and the citizen initiative. Between biennial sessions, the Governor’s control of the budget proposal and administration gives the office substantial practical reach.

North Dakota elects its judges in nonpartisan elections. The North Dakota Supreme Court sits at the top, above the trial-level District Courts; the state has a small, sparingly used temporary Court of Appeals rather than a permanent intermediate court, reflecting its small population and caseload. The Governor fills mid-term judicial vacancies by appointment from a nominating committee’s list, after which the appointee must stand in the next nonpartisan election.