was subsequently amended again, in 1978, the provision was to establish what critics derisively called "leapfrog government.") Another provision allowed for the consolidation of a county government with the government of a county's main city, in the four largest counties. The convention also established precedents that later proved useful. Since no one who served in the 1870 convention, which wrote the constitution, was still alive, many administrative measures had to be decided, such as what rules the convention would function under temporarily until it was organized and adopted its own permanent rules and how a chair was to be elected. Also, the constitution was decided to be compiled in a manner similar to statutory law, unlike the federal constitution. Thus, that amendments actually replace the language that they alter in the document, and future publications would have amendments integrated into the text rather than appended to it as "Amendment I," "Amendment II," etc. Thus, someone reading the text of the state constitution can, absent a strong historical background, sometimes be confused as to the provisions that are those of the original document and the ones that are the result of later amendment, but some amendments declare themselves to be such within the text of their provisions. That does prevent a reader of the current constitution from being confused by encountering obsolete provisions that have since been changed and not reading on to the end of the document to establish that fact, which is sometimes done to the federal constitution by those wish to obscure its current provisions, such as those who assert that the document considers slaves as three-fifths of a person, which has not applied since the American Civil War but is still in the text of the early part of the document. The amendment changing that is not encountered until much later in the text. Further amendments to the state constitution were proposed and then adopted at conventions, held in 1959 and 1965. Among the most notable are for the establishment of home rule by counties that chose to adopt a charter so they can function in many ways similar to municipalities. The amendments also allowed legislators to receive a salary besides expense money and extended the terms of state senators from two years to four, but only half of its membership is elected every two years. Another important change was that the frequency of scheduled sessions of