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Comment by laser | Hacker News Reader

Probably more about the visibility than the outcome—an attempt to drive a narrative that Uber et al are corrupt regulatory-capturing entities that are manipulating the public through a suit like this could help the NO on Prop 22 cause. The trouble is, although that is substantially true, California legislators have broken things so badly with AB-5 that the public has no choice but to vote YES on Prop 22.

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I'm not voting for any loosening of labor laws that requires a 7/8th majority to change.

And, honestly, what Uber has been doing with its platform recently has been really worrying me. I get a push notification almost every single day now asking me to vote Yes on Prop 22. I'm worried for what the future holds if this sort of thing is permitted because of Citizens United.

Requiring 7/8ths to overrule the public vote should be the norm for any ballot measure.

Florida pulled their stunt where they override the public referendum on restoring felons voting rights, because they wanted to and they could. You might not like Prop 22, but imho if the public wants an amendment then their will should be sacrosanct.

No no no. The entire concept of ballot measures is insane since the electorate is not qualified to govern. The core concept of the Constitution is that the voters pick someone they trust and that person makes the decisions for them.

> The core concept of the Constitution is that the voters pick someone they trust and that person makes the decisions for them

Expanding on this, it traces from classical observations on the relative strengths and weaknesses of monarchy (modern: autocracy), oligarchy (modern: junta) and democracy (modern: mob rule to anarchy). It is why we have our three branches of government, and puts U.S.-China (and previously, U.S.-Soviet) competition on long-term rails.

I don't agree, Switzerland is a really well run country and politicians can't just overrule votes there. I'd go as far as to say that you don't have a proper democracy if the people can't overrule the will of politicians.

Switzerland is an ethnostate which doesn’t even grant citizenship to “foreigners” after a lifetime spent in the country. It works for them but would not be a suitable form for a country that was formed out of hodgepodge immigration.

I can't believe the 7/8ths rule isn't a bigger story than it is. Insanely undemocratic. I wouldn't vote for any bill that included that stipulation.

The 7/8 provision only applies to changes made by the legislature -- if Prop 22 were to pass, voters could repeal or amend it with a simple majority vote on a future ballot initiative.

By default, laws enacted via ballot initiative in California can't be changed by the legislature at all without voter approval -- California has some of the strongest protections in the country for these (see https://ballotpedia.org/Legislative_alteration)

Who would organize and pay for such an initiative?

I have seen in other comments that it can be changed with a simple majority with another prop, but if the legislature want to override the prop they need a 7/8 super-majority.

It's not a big story because it's technically a leniency. There are other props on the same ballot which cannot be overturned by the legislature at all. Constitutionally (the CA constitution) the default is that a ballot measure cannot be overturned without another ballot measure.

I agree that the 7/8th's thing is ridiculous, and it is most of the reason why I have decided to vote against 22, but it's not particularly notable, this is just how ballot props work and it is why your presumptive answer to most CA ballot props should be no.

  a ballot measure cannot be overturned without another ballot measure

If the Legislature wants to change a statute put in by initiative, they can provisionally. This generates a Legislative Statute proposition. Most of those pass without a lot of scrutiny. No voter signatures are needed.

it makes more sense in the frame of the original AB5 being passed with a massive margin, so a slightly higher margin was included to prevent an immediate reversal by the legislator.

So you're saying you'd prefer if Prop 22 didn't have that rule in which case even 8/8 of the legislature couldn't change it. 7/8 is generous since it means law makers can actually overturn this prop. Something that can't be done for other props (eg. see prop 16 which exists to repeal a previous prop).

The Uber Eats order I placed recently (in CA) felt more like a political campaign than a restaurant delivery service. It didn't exactly drive me further towards a Yes, no pun intended.

Yes, but did you read that huge HN thread about political activism in the workplace? Maybe this is just Ubers "mission", and if you are not on board, to hell!

This has nothing to do with citizens united.

What? It is directly related to Citizens United and associated precedent, these are independent expenditures by a corporation in an election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_National_Bank_of_Boston_...

Citizens United had to do with independent expenditures on "electioneering communications", defined as advocacy related to specific political candidates. Spending on issue advocacy was already unlimited. (Which is almost certainly the right decision - if issue advocacy were restricted, organizations like the EFF wouldn't be able to talk at all in the 60 days before an election.)

EFF is not a corporation.

EFF is most certainly a corporation; it is a non-profit corporation registered in MA, ID number 043091431.

I don’t know if this link will work for others, but searching by name will turn it up:

http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/CorpWeb/CorpSearch/CorpSummary.a...

Citizens United wasn't just about for-profit corporations. The namesake organization Citizens United is a nonprofit as well.

The alternative was it required an 8/8 majority to change. California doesn’t let the legislature override props (for better or worse).

That's a false dichotomy. Addressing any perceived problems with the law through less extreme means than Prop 22 would be another option.

As one example of how Prop 22 is extreme, it imposes an absurdly high 7/8 supermajority requirement to make legslative changes "consistent" with the proposition and a new initiative vote to make inconsistent changes. Entrenching self-interested corporate-written legislation to that extreme is awful.

Currently the only two child comments to your comment mention the requirement of 7/8ths in agreement for legislative amendment and say that this is ridiculous. I just finished reading an article saying that most ballot measures do not allow for legislative amendment at all.

Who knows what to believe anymore. I don't live in California anymore so I have no vested interest in the politics there. Let this be a lesson to not believe everything you see on the internet.

By default, ballot intiatives, once enacted, can't be repealed or changed by the legislature. When a proposition has historically allowed for legislative editing, it's typically to allow for unthought of edge cases to be handled without going again through the ballot prop process. Far as I know, of propositions that allow for legislative editing, requiring a 7/8th majority is unprecedented.

The legislature can always work around this, however, with a simple majority, by passing a proposed constitutional amendment to be approved by referendum.

I'm pretty sure they do have a choice.

AB2257 fixes most of the issues of AB5.

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