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Comment by Jommi | Hacker News Reader

You realize many laws don't allow any legislative input at all right? By default, a law enacted by ballot measure can only be changed by another law enacted by ballot measure.

You can go learn something about it from here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/initia...

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>"I’ve looked at a lot of ballot measures over the years," said Moylan, adding that a two-thirds majority is common.

>But a seven-eighths "super, super, super-duper majority," she said, "is new as far as I’m aware."[1]

It is relatively standard for propositions to include some ways for the legislature to amend the law. It isn't a full legal requirement, but it is common. The a 7/8 majority is nearly impossible to reach on anything but the most milquetoast bills. That requirement was seemingly included so they supporters of the bill could feign that it was flexible while not really conceding any possibility of it being changed. If Prop 22 is going to be amended or repealed, it basically has to be done through the popular vote.

[1] - https://calmatters.org/politics/post-it/2020/10/california-a...

From the same article:

>No surprise, many ballot measures do not say otherwise. Compared to that default, Prop. 22’s high bar for amendments actually gives the Legislature more influence than the norm.

>If Prop 22 is going to be amended or repealed, it basically has to be done through the popular vote.

And how exactly is this a bad thing?

Because the 7/8 majority is nothing but lip service to being flexible. It is designed to be used the exact way you are doing now in debates like this. A majority that high is not feasible to actually be implemented.

??? Are you just ignoring everything we previously discussed?

Having a way to directly amend the law via some majority is completely optional. There is no need to ever include that in the ballot proposition. Why are you choosing to completely ignore this clear fact?

I'm really questioning if GPT3 would come up with better responses than @slg. They seemed to talk themselves into circles, and repeat themselves quite often, not taking into account new information. It's almost like they have a litany of responses that they fall back onto.

I'm not ignoring anything. I am simply pointing out the 7/8 majority is so impractical that it is a worthless addition that only serves the appearance of making the law appear amendable but in practice it can only truly be amended by the popular vote.

Yes, and amending by popular vote is the norm. What exactly is the issue here again?

As I said several comments ago:

>It is relatively standard for propositions to include some ways for the legislature to amend the law. It isn't a full legal requirement, but it is common.

The will of the people will not be superceded. Why would we allow legislature to overpower a ballot measure? We voted. The only thing people can be upset about is their lack of educating themselves on what they were voting for in the ballot measure. People cannot be coddled when it comes to their vote. Any undue influence would rot the inside and then why have a democracy?

It’s not practical for most voters to educate themselves on the typically dozen or so ballot measures. It’s too much homework, and you don’t get paid for it.

I do my due diligence, but it’s not easy to get a full understanding of how I want to vote. It’s a significant amount of work, and a lot of people will not spend the time.

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