 When the newly elected National Assembly refused to pass this document and drafted one of its own preserving this prohibition, it was forcibly dissolved by "Gendarmerie" commandant Smedley Butler.This constitution was approved by a plebiscite in 1919, in which less than 5% of the population voted.The US State Department authorized this plebiscite presuming that "the people casting ballots would be 97% illiterate, ignorant in most cases of what they were voting for."