When Jewish organizations protested that September 27 was Rosh Hashanah that year, Governor A. Harry Moore convened the legislature into special session to set a new date.

That document, which remained in force until 1947, provided for annual elections for the New Jersey General Assembly, the lower house of the legislature, and for three-year terms for members of the state Senate.

[19] The term-extending provisions were scheduled in the Senate for the portion of the session intended for bills vetoed by the governor, to begin March 31, 1926.

[27] Since the Senate had amended the proposals, they returned to the Assembly, where, also on July 19, the majority leader, Anthony J. Siracusa Jr. (R-Atlantic County) moved to suspend the rules in order to consider them.

[19] In his annual message on January 11, 1927, Governor Moore stated his support for a constitutional convention to revise New Jersey's governing document.

He opposed, though, the lengthening of the gubernatorial term and having the governor elected at the same time as the president, describing the effort to confuse state with national politics as vicious.

Morris E. Barison of Hudson County, the minority leader, stated to the Republican majority, "you cannot elect a governor in the off years and so you have adopted this means.

[40] There were continued reports of Democratic opposition to the amendment, spearheaded by the powerful Hudson County political boss, Mayor Frank Hague of Jersey City.

[47] When the legislature convened on April 14, bills were introduced to change the date of the election, and to authorize two more judges and make provision for their salaries.

[26] Former assemblyman Alexander Crawford of Hudson County,[49] Barison's clerk,[50][51] who was described by The Daily Record of Long Branch as the "mouthpiece of Mayor Frank Hague", pointed out the issue and stated his belief that the amendment was defective.

[56] The St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested that lawmakers might want to consult the dictionary "biennially, or better still biannually; and they might find it illuminating for them to peruse it bimonthly, or biweekly".

[58] Legislators could have repassed the amendment at a special session in 1927, passed it again in 1928, and placed it before the voters later that year, in time to be implemented at the November election.

[48][59] Instead, the legislature relied on two experts: Dr. Frank A. Vizetelly of New York – editor of the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary – and Professor Robert K. Root, head of the English department at Princeton University,[60] who stated that in its root and structure, "biannually" meant biennially, and, in addition to passing the law changing the election date to September 20, passed a resolution stating that in using the word "biannually", it meant every two years.

[61][63] Republican Clarence E. Case of Somerset County, who had served on the six-member committee, stated that Simpson should have pointed out the word "biannually" the previous year.

Senator Walter E. Edge also endorsed the amendments in a speech to party leaders in Asbury Park, stating that the less frequent elections would lead to monetary savings.

He called the term extender amendment "a dastardly piece of politics" and stated that, "the Republicans want to change for no reason other than to regain control of the governor's office.

[75] At the same time, New Jersey Republicans appointed a fundraising committee led by Morris County Clerk E. Bertram Mott.

[75] In early July, the Democratic state convention passed a platform supporting the zoning amendment on the September ballot and opposing the term extender.

Regarding the term extender, the pamphlet noted that the greatest number of votes were cast in presidential years, and there should be no objection to having the governor elected by the most voters.

[78] Democrats argued that voting the party ticket had become routine in presidential years and that national issues would dominate the debate.

[82] Edge responded in Atlantic City two days later, asking for Republicans to turn out in their usual two-to-one majority, "When Mayor Hague goes out of his own county to tour the state as he is now doing, he knows that the passage of these amendments will end the succession of Democratic governors.

"[83] The New York Times reported on September 10 that Republicans feared defections by woman voters persuaded by the Democratic arguments.

[87] The next night, thousands of Democrats crowded the Newark Armory for a rally against the amendments, with speeches by Moore, Edwards, Norton, Hague and Heher.

[90] Polls were open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., except in rural districts that did not observe Daylight Savings Time, where votes could be cast from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.[91] The term extender amendment was defeated, 219,749 against to 153,960 for (41.2 percent), a margin of 65,789.

[90] Stokes stated that the result was unsurprising, as "it is a difficult thing to educate the people to an interest in abstract organic law".

[93] The Bergen Evening Record editorialized that the term extender amendment had been "more or less an insult to the high-minded people of New Jersey ... it was so bunglingly framed that it might well have been the handiwork of the pages in the Senate instead of the members.

[96] The Morning Post of Camden ascribed the Republican defeat to conservatism among New Jersey's voters when it came to changing the constitution, a feeling among them that state and national politics should be separated and that the term extender was unfair, as well as Hague's power and ability.

[99] The Newark Daily Call stated, "outside the ranks of intense partisans there were many who would have supported the term extender amendment had it not been so crudely drawn.

Over the next several years, repeated attempts were made to pass a new constitution, but they failed in part because of the opposition of Hague, who considered them partisan (Edge, who had been elected governor again in 1943, supported them).

[104] According to John E. Bebout and Joseph Harrison in their study of the 1947 New Jersey Constitution, "The old system of annual selection exacted a high price in time, money, wasted experience, and diversion from the main business of the legislature.