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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it:

> The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead.

I have an Ivy League education and I still could hardly understand it, and I still think some of the language is ambiguous (i.e. I think "the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount" can be interpreted both ways).

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2022/03/25/the-lang...

View on HN

The assumption of most of the comments here is that bad writing is a matter of incompetence, but in the case of public policy I think Hanlon's Razor no longer applies. Given what we know about Texas politics and American ballot measures in general, it's quite possible that the ambiguity was introduced deliberately to give big landowners (or rather their lawyers) extra wiggle room. If that's true then the only communications for which the public were the intended audience are the advertisements, which I'm sure bore no resemblance to the text of the law.

It's not even the writing - it can be blatant misinterpretation. There's precedential opinion that states that you can't ignore the letter of the law to pursue it's spirt. Yet there's a law that has "reasonable care" in it, but the precedential opinion on that is that it's a strict liability offense because 'applying reasonable care would frustrate enforcing the legislature's intent'...

The judges don't care. They're not impartial. They want the state to win more often than not. I mean, who pays their salary and what looks better than being part of law and order?

It can also be intentional deception. Look at the recent PA vote on retirement age of judges removing the language that provided voters info on the current age limit.

A great example is Measure A which was passed in the last election a few months back in Santa Clara county:

> Shall the measure amending the Santa Clara Valley Water District Ordinance 11-01 to limit Board members to four successive four-year terms be adopted?

Term limits? Heck yes! Voters agreed: term limits are A GOOD THING. Measure A passed!

What wasn't mentioned AT ALL, anywhere in the question put to the voters, is that Santa Clara Valley Water District board members are already limited to 2 terms in office. This was extending term limits from 2 consecutive to 4 consecutive terms. It was getting rid of/weakening term limits. A blatant misrepresentation on the ballot.

Who wrote the text of Measure A? Why the Santa Clara Valley Water District board members who wanted their terms extended, of course.

That's the exact scenario for the PA measure - judges had a mandatory retirement age of 70 and the measure was to set that age at 75. People didn't know that there was already a limit. The original wording provided that info and it failed. Then they rewrote it like this just to get it to pass (I think they also took it to court, where an interesting party, a judge, ruled on the wording).

Interesting.

Here in Washington, an "easy" fix for that is that the initiatives get a column for the "Yes" side and a column for the "no" side, in our voting booklets that we get in the mail with the ballots. But IIRC CA is still in person voting, right?

Yeah the voting booklet has the same design here, and the "No" side called them out on it. But who reads that? (Other than me and you, obviously.) The ballot itself had only the text which I quoted.

I suppose I don’t know how in person voting works. Are there pamphlets inside the booth? Otherwise how are people supposed to refer to it?

WA has been mail-in voting for years, so I vote at home with the pamphlet on the table and a cup of coffee.

Pamphlets are allowed inside the booth, but you have to bring it. They are sent separately in the mail some weeks before the election. At the voting booth they just give you the ballot. The ballot only has the brief descriptive text.

We have vote-by-mail as well, but the number of people who actually read the pamphlet and make an informed decision (rather than just briefly scan the ballot at the last minute) is small enough to matter.

It seems most people don't even research the ballot before going to the polls. People are surprised by the referendums, so how can they make an informed decision? Many seem to go to the polls with the plan of filling out the super bubble to vote party line without even looking at the candidates on the ballot (Dem or Rep).

There was another a few years back where it was reversing the measure to prevent the repeal of another measure which was to stop something else. Still not sure whether I voted for or against something.

Judges get paid whether the state wins or not.

Yes, but collecting fines can be a big revenue stream that helps keep their salary high. This is especially true at the municipal level where all the players know each other. It's also a big deal for judges that get elected to look like they're for law and order.

Hanlon's razor never applies when politics or money is involved. Best to just suspend your judgement instead of giving politicians the benefit of the doubt.

It never applies when there are benefits to be had that don’t need rocket science. The concept itself was probably introduced in bad faith.

Looking at Texas school funding laws, I expect the complexity is aimed at Charter Schools.

I didn't look into the details, but schools with poor attendance can have their "excess" local revenues claimed by the state (state law specifies what excess means). Charter schools don't have local funding (and can play games to pick their students).

The measure above appears to be for adjusting a relief measure for the elderly and disabled downwards when their obligation is reduced (which if it only reduces the relief, could reduce it to 0 over time).

> bad writing is a matter of incompetence

Effective, clear expression needs training, practice and attention. Homo sapiens write as we do because in only 5,000 years we haven't evolved to write naturally and must labor at it.

Clear writing also needs clear thought, obviously. "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."

Our talking isn't necessarily all that much clearer, and we've been doing it for much longer than writing.

(Though to be fair, almost all talking used to be done in an interactive setting, where you can ask clarification questions.)

Oh course, but lawyers do train and practice and pay attention. That's their main job.

Hanlon's razor is a boundary condition. No one knows how to play the game at the start. Humans get better at shit.

It's just complicated, not evil. This amendment reduces some property taxes for people who are widows of service members AND elderly or disabled.

Not exactly big money interests.

I haven't researched it heavily, but wasn't that also true for the 2nd amendment? I doubt all the folks that ratified it agreed on its meaning.

That’s true in general. There was a lot of disagreement over the scope of things like the Commerce Clause, Necessary and Proper Clause, etc.

I don’t think that’s true of the Second Amendment specifically. It was written by a bunch of men who had just used guns they had lying around their farms to form militias and overthrow their government. I don’t think it’s a great mystery what they meant when they wrote the Second Amendment.

Insofar as the prefatory clause causes one to stumble, it was a common construct at the time tk have a “why” or explanatory clause prefacing an operative clause: https://www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/NYUL.... You read it exactly like you would read the following:

“Free political debate being necessary to the functioning of a free state, the freedom of speech shall not be abridged.”

> a bunch of men who had just used guns they had lying around their farms to form militias and overthrow their government.

That pretty seriously overstates the case: The American Revolution started out that way, but as time went on, the Continental Army acquired serious artillery and became reasonably professional — thanks largely to Henry Knox; Baron von Steuben; and the Marquis de La Fayette — and the decisive factor at Yorktown was the intervention of a French naval squadron and expeditionary force.

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

https://www.historynet.com/arming-revolution-continental-arm...

This is true, but as you say, the revolution started out the way rayiner describes it, and it seems very plausible that the 2nd. amendment was motivated by that specific circumstance.

Personally, I think we would have been better off without the 2nd amendment, and the framers of the constitution may not have foreseen the role it has come to play in politics (if so, it would be far from the only case), but I cannot find much ambiguity in it.

The framers didn’t anticipate armies becoming permanent institutions, which is why we have a “no standing army” requirement that we just kind of ignore. But even that only makes the second amendment clearer: if you don’t have a standing army, who has the guns? The answer is militias comprised of heavily armed citizenry.

You seem to be ignoring the concept of an armory (the local Armory food hall used to hold weapons) which does not require individual ownership of the heavy arms, not a standing army.

Also there is no "no sanding Army" requirement. There is only a requirement that the army can only be funded for 2 years ahead, presumably to require ongoing consent from Legislature, to prevent a Chancellor Hitler-type situation or a President becoming King by getting a huge multi year funding and then turning against the future Legislature and the country.

I am pretty certain that the large military powers at the time (England, France certainly Prussia) had standing armies already. So I would be highly surprised that the founders did not anticipate armies as a permanent institution. That would be a pretty big blind spot, considering they already existed.

They Constitution (and the framers) opposed the President having a standing army. It supported the country having one with biannual renewal of consent from Legislature for funding.

And the War of 1812 taught President Madison the danger of being under militarized and over-reliant on militias.

In some ways, the Founders were delightfully naive. Kings also already existed, and they'd just thrown off control of one.

Many Founders believed a standing army to be an inherently corrupting force (if you have a warrior class, sooner or later they will make you go to war) and thought America would be better without one. Whether or not that could have been true in the abstract became irrelevant because the need to perpetually defend territory meant that there was never an opportunity to disband the Continental Army.

It's easy to forget that the United States of the ratification of the Constitution is a different United States than the one we live in now. Both the Civil War and the radical reinterpretations of several federal powers during the Great Depression fundamentally changed the nature of federal and state government.

The Second Amemdent's in there because without it, the states wouldn't have been willing to ratify a Constitution that allowed the federal government to take their guns away. After all, they had just won a war against a monarch an ocean away; they weren't about to give their power of defense to an executive half a continent away. Remember, there was no guarantee a Constitution was going to happen at all; quite a few compromises and curveballs in that document are there because every single state had the option of rejecting the whole thing and being their own country. Many Founding Fathers envisioned defense of the US would look like individual states generally handling their own affairs, and a national army only being mobilized in the event of a national threat (however, practically speaking, that didn't come to pass... No sooner was the Constitution ratified than Washington led the Continental Army to force the citizens of western Pennsylvania to pay federal taxes).

Gun regulation was properly recognized as a state authority for most of the country's history prior to the Civil War and varied wildly from state to state, with many being significantly more restrictive than modern law. It's only with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (and the Due Process clause, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law") that the Second Amendment ties the hands of state governments in the same way it tied the hands of the federal government. This restriction has been re-interpreted over the decades, but broadly speaking that's how we got from a 1700s Philadelphia that banned gun ownership for some immigrants to the modern interpretation where even tracking who owns a firearm might be considered an abridgment of the right of ownership.

I think that’s actually a coherent view of the 2A. But when you pull on the 14A incorporation thread quite a lot unravels with it. The Establishment Clause, for example, was intended to prevent the federal government from interfering with state established churches, some of which still existed at the time. It actually makes no sense to incorporate that provision against the states.

Makes no sense other than we had just fought a war over the concept of states' rights overriding federal protections. Hypothetically, they could have narrowly-tailored the 13th through 15th amendments to end slavery and do little else, I think it is possible that lawmakers of the day came to a rational conclusion that the next time the states challenged federal authority so brazenly, it wouldn't be over slavery but over some other issue of fundamental rights... And if the protections laid out in the Constitution were good enough for people when exposed to law at the federal level, they should be good enough for citizens of the states as well. One certainly can't expect that anyone would have benefited if, hypothetically, Georgia were to dedicate itself to Roman Catholicism and declare all federal laws null and void, replaced by the law from the Vatican (a scenario that could have been possible prior to the 14th).

One advantage the chosen approach has is, in a sense, interpretive simplicity, even though in practice it strips much authority from the states and moves it up to the federal level.

There is no law preventing civilians from owning cannons and other artillery of any caliber so long as they are not automatic.

The Second Amendment is a bit more confusing than at first glance.

"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed"

Seems nice and straightforwards, right? Trouble is, that's just one of many versions. Different states ratified slightly different versions of the Second Amendment, the main difference being the presence of absence of different commas. For example, see this version from the National Archives [0]

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"

[0] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...

The (personally) funny thing about the 2nd amendment is that since I am not a native English speaker, its syntax looks broken to me. Without "since" or "because" at the beginning it reads either as a non sequitur or as a "driving by the gas station, my hat flew off" kind of sentence: the subject suddenly changes midway through and (in my native language) it's a hallmark of non-literate speech which one would really, really like to not have in an important legal document.

For the record, the extra commas after “Militia” and “Arms” would be considered incorrect by modern standards, though the sentence would otherwise be fine (aside from capitalization).

Formal grammar (and spelling!) is a recent invention in USA. Language is much more fluid than many pretend and programmers expect.

> It was written by a bunch of men who had just used guns they had lying around their farms to form militias and overthrow their government.

One of the catalysts to writing the Constitution in the first place was when a bunch of former soldiers took the guns they had lying around, tried to seize government munitions, and overthrow the Massachusetts government. The federal government couldn't raise an army to put down Shay's rebellion, and had to use local/private militia.

So it cuts both ways.

That might be true of all the early amendments, given that they aren't painstakingly defined like modern laws. It might also be that they did agree (the ones who voted for it) and it's lost to history (federalist and antifederalist papers have some background, as do the similar state level constitutional provisions about arms, the press, etc).

Here are the text complexity scores from different measures for this text.

Flesch Reading Ease score: -24 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: impossible to comprehend.

Gunning Fog: 40.7 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: EXTREMELY difficult to read.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 35.7 Grade level: College Graduate and above.

The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college

The SMOG Index: 25 Grade level: graduate college

Automated Readability Index: 41.7 Grade level: College graduate

Linsear Write Formula : 57.5 Grade level: College Graduate and above.

In case anyone wants to use these for some other writing...

Flesch Reading Ease score: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/flesch-kincaid-readi...

Gunning Fog: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/gunning-fog-score/

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/flesch-kincaid-grade...

The Coleman-Liau Index: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/coleman-liau-index

The SMOG Index: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/smog-index/

Automated Readability Index: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/automated-readabilit...

Linsear Write Formula : https://www.textcompare.org/readability/linsear-write/

The site actually seems to have quite a few different methods available, if you look at the footer.

This might actually help me with some of the writing in my own blog posts and such, to check whether any paragraphs don't get too convoluted.

Oh, also there's this site, which attempts to show you the particular sentences that might be hard to read: https://hemingwayapp.com/

Are you suggesting that our legal system should be understandable by the dumbest person? I don't see how that's feasible or desirable.

I think we can find some middle ground between understandable-by-dumbest-person and "impossible to comprehend".

> "The text achieves a minimum score of 45 on the Flesch reading ease test as computed in subsection (5) or an equivalent score on any other test comparable in result and approved by the office;"

https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/627.4145

These are the scores for the ballot measure that Texas voters were supposed to vote yes or no on.

So absolutely yes. When you're asking people to vote on something, and you actually want informed voters, I unquestionably want ballot measures to be understandable by everyone that reads them.

Exactly - The Flesch Kincaid gives you ranges, and it's reasonable for amendments to be within a certain range. For example, in Florida, all life insurance policies must have a Flesch Kincaid score of at least 45. This still scores as "Difficult to Fairly Difficult." It'd be interesting to see what the readability scores are for different amendments. > "The text achieves a minimum score of 45 on the Flesch reading ease test as computed in subsection (5) or an equivalent score on any other test comparable in result and approved by the office;"

https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/627.4145

No: That'd be impossible.

But it is reasonable to have these sorts of things understandable to the average high school graduate and to the average retiree (different schooling, different mental statuses). And by average, I truly mean that the range of average should be able to read it so that comprehension should be widespread.

If your average high school graduate cannot comprehend it, your wording is too difficult, your education too poor, your document was written by people without the skills to talk plainly, or a combination of these.

It seems too obvious to be worth saying: the law should be simple enough to understand that people of good will can comply with it without engaging a lawyer.

Very few of us have a lawyer in our back-pocket nowadays. Sure, laws regulating some kinds of financial transactions and contracts are necessarily going to be complicated and hard to understand. But the general rule should be "If the law isn't something an ordinary person could be expected to know, then they aren't bound by it". That would put an end to clever-clever legal drafting.

I doubt that is what they are saying. It seems more likely they are saying the text should not be "extremely difficult to read" or "impossible to comprehend".

Though actually what they are saying is "I put the text in these algorithms and got these scores". It is left to others to draw conclusions like I did above.

Yes, exactly. You can draw whatever conclusion you'd like from the data, and many text scoring systems have issues, but there is still a clear pattern here where this text is far outlier.

Everyone is subject to the law. How can you have any hope of following a law you cannot read? It certainly should be a goal.

also school system does not teach you anything about criminal law or your rights, but teaches you poetry and differential equasions.

Like everyone else - from the most destitute individual to the most sophisticated megacorporation - you can ask someone more literate.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

Anatole France

Nice, are you gonna pay for my consulation with the lawyer?

I have spent the equivalent of a house deposit on immigration lawyers just to make sure paperwork is filed correctly and I know what I am allowed / not allowed to do. Many people simply can't afford that.

No, but it should not be intentionally obfuscated either; there's a middle ground.

But it should be simplified if it's intended to be read and comprehended by the general public. This is an issue now with terms of service and contracts, to the point where people who cannot comprehend the language are being exploited.

The Flesch Kincaid gives you ranges, and it's reasonable for amendments to be within a certain range. For example, in Florida, all life insurance policies must have a Flesch Kincaid score of at least 45.

> "The text achieves a minimum score of 45 on the Flesch reading ease test as computed in subsection (5) or an equivalent score on any other test comparable in result and approved by the office;"

https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2011/627.4145

Not by the dumbest person but by a majority of people. If citizens are expected to follow the law and if ignorance of the law is not an excuse then it should be comprehensible by the majority.

> Are you suggesting that our legal system should be understandable by the dumbest person?

If possible, on a case by case basis. If it's difficult, we lock people in a room for 8 hours a day from age 5 to 17, and don't let them leave until they understand. If it still doesn't work, we get rid of the law.

There is another solution. Write laws in at least two languages: English and Spanish.

This approach does wonders in Switzerland and in Belgium.

It's a boon to EU to get rid of most of native English speakers, btw. See this opinion by a famous Belgian philosopher on the matter [1].

[1] https://www.brusselstimes.com/290948/forced-to-speak-in-a-fo...

I think the Feynman technique would be an excellent improvement to the situation, so yes.

Wow, I actually had to vote on that and couldn't parse out what it was saying, so I left that one blank. I have a PhD, it's in computer science, but still.

As a rule of thumb, if the ballot measure is incomprehensible, you're safe in voting against it (which, obnoxiously enough, can sometimes mean voting yes)

There is never a good reason for using language this obtuse, but there's lots of bad reasons.

This measure in particular seems engineered to be just clear enough to be upheld by a judge, but also sufficiently obfuscated so that the public doesn't know what it's actually voting on.

> you're safe in voting against it (which, obnoxiously enough, can sometimes mean voting yes)

Sure but if you literally cannot understand it, it may be difficult to determine whether voting against it means voting yes or no.

I don’t know, but my assumption as a voter would be that voting no is always a vote for the status quo

And you would be wrong.

The wording was awful but not malicious. The proposition passed by 87%, reducing the amount of school-allocated property taxes the disabled and elderly need to pay. Politically it was the perfect intersection of lowering taxes and social support program.

The main reason for the verbal atrocity is legislators had to cram a more or less complete description into a single sentence, per constitutional requirements.

> The main reason for the verbal atrocity is legislators had to cram a more or less complete description into a single sentence, per constitutional requirements.

Or the other common reason, that they campaigned on getting a measure to the ballot that has voter support, but they don't want it to pass. The first thing you do is come up with a confusing text with extra points for double negatives, and you follow that up with a confusing media campaign.

You may fail, and it passes with 87%, but sometimes if you work hard enough you can get Illinois to vote down a progressive income tax.

I've rewritten the clause by moving "prepositional phrases" into the noun phrases to avoid as much nesting as possible. For example, instead of saying "the husband of the woman, I'd replace it with the woman's husband."

Here's what I think it says: "This constitutional amendment authorizes the legislature to set the ad valorem taxes total reduction amounts that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of an elderly or disabled person in order to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maintenance maximum compressed rate and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead."

Aren't such long phrases horrible writing, kind of by default?

"At times he [the author] may indulge himself with a long one, but he will make sure there are no folds in it, no vaguenesses, no parenthetical interruptions of its view as a whole; when he has done with it, it won't be a sea-serpent with half of its arches under the water; it will be a torch-light procession."

- Mark Twain (via The Economist Style Guide)

I was actually thinking about that, and most of that phrase is an enumeration, it's easier to parse.

You can have long readable phrases. The long phrase is bad rule is just beginner helper, nothing more nothing less.

Wrong. A long phrase requires the user to keep the entire meaning in their head until the end.

Can you show us some "long readable phrases"?

Long, readable phrases (in literature, anyway) tend to be made up of independent clauses with semicolons, and are perfectly understandable (to me, anyway). I sometimes prefer long sentences in some forms of literature - short sentences can be choppy and halting.

"He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if he yielded, he should be obliged to renounce that hatred with which the actions of other men had filled his soul through so many years, and which pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or to be conquered; and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had been begun between his viciousness and the goodness of that man." (Les Miserables, Hapgood translation)

Note that this is also probably easier to understand in context - standalone, I can see how it could be a bit confusing.

In these cases, the “longness” of the phrase and its nonexistent independent clauses are just formalities. We’re calling the same thing by another name. I think it confuses people when there are guidances out there about not using overlong “sentences” but then they are undermined by overlong sentences which are merely “sentences” by technicality.

The rule is, write clearly. And if it’s not clear, write it more clearly. That’s pretty much it.

If you need guidance, Cormack McCarthy is the professor.

Those semicolons can be replaced with periods and negates your point. That's just a string of ideas, not really one logical sentence.

I haven't earnestly studied English grammar to the same level I've studied Romanian grammar.

In Romanian you have "sentences" (noun - verb - etc) and "phrases" (multiple sentences together, basically they're separated only by periods). I think in English grammar "sentences" are called clauses?

Anyway, Romanian "sentences" are generally short, and if they're not, for sure that's bad style. Romanian "phrases" can be long, but depending on the structure of the "sentences" and the logical separation between them, they can be quite clear.

Maybe the same distinction makes sense here? "Sentences" (clauses?) should be relatively clear and short and somewhat independent, "phrases" can be long, but only if their individual components ("sentences") are of high quality on their own and if they're connected in clear ways.

Sort of. If you remove semicolons and use periods, you have to remove the ‘that’ as well. Then, to me, the sentence loses its impact. Theres a parallelism that is artistic, and makes everything flow.

But in some sense this is art, not science; it shouldn’t be analyzed too much :)

> But in some sense this is art, not science; it shouldn’t be analyzed too much :)

I thought we were discussing law, not art. If legal drafting is to be compared with art, only art experts will gain.

I suppose that's true. Got a little sidetracked there :)

Agree when it comes to law - utility trumps art.

semi-colons do help, as does numbering. Using the "and" also helps.

An awful lot of people don't know how to use or interpret semicolons, including lawyers and judges. The best use of semicolons is to designate the timing of prose that is supposed to be spoken (or read as if it was meant to be spoken). In that sense a semicolon is a bit like a comma - it denotes timing and "breath".

When they are used to group ideas, commas and semicolons tend to encourage long, complex utterances that might be ambiguous, and at any rate are harder to parse. If it's important that an utterance be clear, just use simple language.

Expressing complex ideas in simple language is hard - you have to get the ideas perfectly clear in your head. If you still can't express those ideas in simple language, try again to get them clear. Don't draft any laws until you can do that.

"In his time the City was made more fair than it had ever been, even in the days of its first glory; and it was filled with trees and with fountains, and its gates were wrought of mithril and steel, and its streets were paved with white marble; and the Folk of the Mountain laboured in it, and the Folk of the Wood rejoiced to come there; and all was healed and made good, and the houses were filled with men and women and the laughter of children, and no window was blind nor any courtyard empty; and after the ending of the Third Age of the world into the new age it preserved the memory and the glory of the years that were gone."

Every time i see an author use semicolons, they are fullstops in all, but name. It's not a long sentence. It's multiple independent sentences.

> A long phrase requires the user to keep the entire meaning in their head

You could say that about books as well? I mean, if you forget what it is about when you're about to read the end ...

Eumerations can be long and still easy to read especially if using 1) ... 2) ... style. And ; clauses too like the sibling comment says

Once upon a time there was a green and grumpy ogre who lived in a swamp alone and felt himself content, but this contentment was illusory for the ogre had simply never tasted true companionship nonetheless love (platonic nor romantic) prior to his exposure to a talking donkey who had been displaced by political troubles in a far off land, the resolution of which forged strong bonds between the ogre, the donkey, and many other characters such as the princess who would become the ogre's wife, the dragon who had held the princess prisoner and would become the donkey's wife, and a medley of fairytale folk who would be life long friends to both couples.

It was the best of phrases, it was the worst of phrases.

https://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/quotes/it-was-the-best-of...

Also, how do you read paragraphs? Don't you have to keep the entire meaning in your head?

Dots separate clauses. They let you catch your breath, both literally and figuratively. There comes a point where you run out of oxygen, and you forgot how the sentence started anyway.

I think of sentences as cutting information into bite-sized chunks. Paragraphs separate ideas, like different plates separate flavours.

Almost nothing can save a phrase that's 100+ words long[1], no matter who you are.

[1] With some exceptions, such as enumerations.

Kind of, however (and I'm not a native speaker) if it would be simplified, it would also be longer / multiple paragraphs, which will also put some people off of reading / comprehending it - especially these days, where a lot of people have very short attention spans when it comes to reading.

It's easier to lose a reader due to complexity than due to length.

Frankly, it's still pretty obnoxious. And that's not on you, that's on the original.

Thanks, but that's not much help!

Honestly, the ballotopedia summary [1] isn't much clearer! Looks like it passed overwhelmingly (87%), so presumably folks knew what it meant from TV ads? Or they were all successfully and massively misled by the other side's ads, and they had no idea what it meant!

1: https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_Proposition_1,_Property_Tax_Li...

The ballotpedia summary shows that there wasn't really a campaign opposing the measure it seems? In which case presumably it makes sense that it passed overwhelmingly, if no one was voicing any arguments against it

Or people didn't understand it enough to oppose it, or interpreted it opposite to the received interpretation and so were for it, or didn't have enough money to mount a campaign, or assumed others would campaign against it, or ...

I wonder if it's a programmer thing, but as I read that I realised I was mentally bracketing related words together almost like a token parser to build a syntax tree.

Describing it like that is a programmer thing, but the mental operation itself might be more common?

Whoever wrote or approved that should be fired. Whether they are a lawyer or politician, it matters not. To parse it one needs to write it out, draw brackets around concepts, and then add lines between the potentially-grouped concepts because there is so much in-between that you forget it all by the time you get to the end.

Apparently that's just the title, though what the proposition does is apparently appending a similarly incomprehensible sentence to the state consitution:

        BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
          SECTION 1.  Section 1-b, Article VIII, Texas Constitution,
   is amended by adding Subsection (d-2) to read as follows:
          (d-2)  Notwithstanding Subsections (d) and (d-1) of this
   section, the legislature by general law may provide for the
   reduction of the amount of a limitation provided by Subsection (d)
   of this section and applicable to a residence homestead for a tax
   year to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year
   in the maximum compressed rate, as defined by general law, or a
   successor rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for
   general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the
   homestead. A general law enacted under this subsection may take
   into account the difference between the tier one maintenance and
   operations rate for the 2018 tax year and the maximum compressed
   rate for the 2019 tax year applicable to a residence homestead and
   any reductions in subsequent tax years before the tax year in which
   the general law takes effect in the maximum compressed rate
   applicable to a residence homestead.

For this reason it should be voted against, as it makes the state constitution illegible, but as for what it does I haven't a single clue.

I don't think the wording is the problem. It says what it does.

The problem is in the effect of the law.

Article 8 Section 1-b (d) says that an elderly or disabled person's property taxes (on their home) can't be increased if the money would go to public schools. It also establishes the concept that their current (unincreasable) educational property taxes are transferable property; they can take this "limitation" with them if they move.

However, while it establishes the concept, it doesn't enact anything. Section 1-b (d) doesn't say that people can take their limitation with them if they move. It says that the legislature is free to make a law allowing them to do so:

> The legislature, by general law, may provide for the transfer of all or a proportionate amount of a limitation provided by this subsection for a person who qualifies for the limitation and establishes a different residence homestead.

It also has two clauses, which I assume were added by amendment, specifying a reduced limitation for the year 1997 and for the year 2015. I didn't notice any clause authorizing the legislature to enact this type of reduction, but they seem to have managed to do it all the same.

Anyway, the new subsection also doesn't make any changes to the limitation. Like the clause about transferring your limitation from one home to another home, this one authorizes the legislature to modify the limitation under certain circumstances:

> Notwithstanding Subsections (d) and (d-1) of this section, the legislature by general law may provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation provided by Subsection (d) of this section and applicable to a residence homestead for a tax year to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate, as defined by general law, or a successor rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the homestead.

Bad writing isn't the reason this is difficult to understand. The reason is that there are too many layers of indirection; the system itself is difficult to understand, and therefore any description of it will also be difficult to understand.

The only effect of this law appears to be to authorize the state legislature to pass laws. They could already do that. What is the effect supposed to be?

I suspect it's a specificity thing to override federal law that would allow such redirection of funds as described without an explicit law.

There is no redirection of funds involved...

Funny that I was about to comment "it doesn't seem so bad, just draw a directed graph to work it out". Reading your comment it does seem a little unreasonable.

No ballot initiative should require back-of-the-napkin syntactic analysis to understand.

A normative statement - which I declare to point out that you could also share what should be the case.

What might be more helpful is that ballot initiatives should have a stricter template based on type. If you're changing tax code it could be:

- Initiative Type: Taxes

- Affects: The homesteads of elders in X, Y, for Z

- Results: Taxes are raised

- Description: As stated above

- Definitions: Homesteads - X, Elders - Y, ad valorem - etc

Of course this is essentially making the same conclusions as the title which is that standard writing/legalese is really no longer acceptable given the complexity of many modern laws and incentivized parties.

They were deliberately torturing themselves to avoid saying "raise taxes."

What they seem to be saying, if I parsed it correctly:

"We now get to include tax breaks from the previous year as a factor in property value when taxing the elderly."

That seems awful. I kind of get the hyper-technicality they're going for, but it still seems like they're sticking it to seniors... again, if I understood it correctly.

These issues are nuanced. Texas municipalities depend on property taxes more than most as there’s no state income tax.

One thing local government politicians love to do is pass tax exemptions for old people, disabled people, veterans and combinations of the three. It’s a type of patronage, that lets Mayor Good ‘ol Boy drop by the senior center and VFW and pull in the votes.

Property taxes are essentially allocating the levy based on your proportional share of value. When they get out of control in small towns the effect is a two-tier system where some people pay dramatically more.

That’s exactly the opposite of what it does. Stuff like ‘reduce the limitation’ has the same ambiguity as ‘turn down the thermostat’ where it’s not clear if you are lowering the value or the effect.

I'm not 100% certain I understand it, but I see 3 sections in there:

The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of

a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled

to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead.

Part of the political art of introducing a ballot referendum is phrasing your amendment in a way that makes it more likely for you to win. The goal isn’t necessarily to be accessible.

Most of the referendums that come up in my local jurisdiction are often criticized for their hostile phrasing.

Does it mean we are banning the taxation of old or disabled people to pay for elementary and secondary school?

Seems a bit weird, why not just not do said thing, why is there a need for a law banning it? Is it just to make things difficult for the other side (presumably democrats)?

>For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience"

Why not though? Do laypeople not have to follow these laws/contracts? Or do we expect everyone in the modern age to have a pocket lawyer available to them?

If the average person can't understand the rules that they must follow then there's really no such thing as "law and order", there's only selective enforcement.

Should have a third-option for "Not understood" and if more than 20% tick it then it gets dropped.

In my (limited) experience I have seen very smart and talented people craft confusing agreements for these reasons:

_ They start with an agreement drafted by one person and then many people propose or insist on edits, but because the process is a negotiation the tendency is not to rewrite the agreement but instead to tack on language from another author in a way that is confusing. Sometimes you end up saying the same thing twice in slightly different ways because two people wanted to say the thing in two ways and you want to just move on in a negotiation.

_ You often work from a complicated agreement that has worked in the past and has all sorts of phrases and clauses from previous versions. People hate to change things and if they do make a change it is usually to add more.

To be fair, the laypeople are also likely bombarded with advertising about the ballot measure. The advertising will simplify what's stated, and get at some potential consequences of voting yes vs. voting no. There could actually be a benefit with this language in that uninformed voters will actually not vote on it, whereas generally speaking, people vote with complete disregard to their level of knowledge about a subject.

Also to be fair, even if the language was perfectly easy to understand, there's probably at best a 70-30 shot the voters pick the right choice, since people lack the critical thinking skills, and education in public policy and economics to choose what's best.

But there's no guarantee that advertising won't be misleading.

Not all ballot measures receive lots of advertising. In Texas, ballot measures like this with an impenetrable description are not uncommon. My sense is that if people can't figure out what something is actually about (as in this case) then they mostly go "sure, whatever" and vote for it.

Are you an attorney?

I have a relative who worked in bill drafting for a legislature. The structure of this stuff is sort of it’s own art driven by the deadlines as a lot of legislation is associated with things with deadlines like budget bills.

This isn’t the king’s English, but it isn’t egregiously unclear if you understand what it’s about.

For comparison, here's the wording on the Brexit ballot papers in 2016:

> Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

Voters had to choose from one of the following:

- Remain a member of the European Union - Leave the European Union

That was a challenge. I just had some fun trying to make it tolerable. Not sure I made it.

> The constitutional amendment that lets the legislature lower the limit of taxes that elderly or disabled people must pay for elementary and secondary public school purposes on their residence homestead. The new limit will reflect any lowering of the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those same purposes on that homestead.

When I was a kid, I was so naive and asked questions like "where there were so many obvious problems and they let them be for years?".

It's a shame that I did not realize it was never about right or wrong but rather interests until decades later.

So if you view it from a different perspective such as who will benefit from such wording, you will for sure get a much clearer picture.

I am not sure but they are reducing the amount they are limiting property taxes, maybe if you got a reduction last year, {subject to a whole bunch of filter clauses}.

Was there any documentation with before/after examples. That is what this needs. Taxes are complicated. Examples are great for getting your head around it.

When you can just point at a law degree as unfalsifiable proof a contract must be legit what is the layman to do?

It could be argued the reason the law is successful (like many other “successful” social frameworks in history) is the ignorance of the masses.

High minded gossip, hyping story of forever human life and expansion is a human tradition.

I disagree with the assumption that the intent is for voters to understand what they are voting for. The purpose is to either get the vote or not. And language games, including intentional trickery, are a legally valid way of accomplishing either goal.

The number one problem with this language is that everything is inlined because they don't have the concept of macros or variables. They have some variables but they are all ad-hoc designed into the language. For instance: ad-valorem means something but it's all from history. Adding a new term is a huge effort in this language.

Secondarily, they don't have a concept of macros except in a very ad-hoc sense. This means that they are afraid of macro use because they do not know the concepts of macro hygiene.

This is likely due to intentional creating a moat around the industry.

tl;dr Legalese is impenetrable because it uses the equivalent of Forth but POSIWID

I don't know about that, for example contracts usually define their terms as they go along. "Hereinafter referred to as...". That's basically a #define macro.

Isn't that more akin to a constant? Because #define macros are quite powerful, they can also express constants.

Not sure (not a lawyer), but at the very least the "Hereinafter referred to as…" statement can point to the entire agreement containing that statement: https://s3.studylib.net/store/data/008711807_1-e257ae31713cf...

The advantage of natural languages is self-referential infinite recursion is basically fine. The downside is, no compile-time checks for logical inconsistencies.

Right, in theory, but in practice they don't really use that functionality, right? I think the reason they don't is that they have macro hygiene issues with the language because while natural language has supreme flexibility, it does not have easy to use scoping constructs and so things inside the macro will leak to outside the macro.

At least some of the issue is a state constitutional requirement that propositions be one sentence.

It would be interesting to see what ML/AI could do rephrasing analysis of legislation.

How people are supposed to comply with regulation when they do not understand that?

Lol. Brutal

> I have an Ivy League education and I still could hardly understand it

Downvote for arrogance. An Ivy League education doesn't mean you're smarter.

Yes, it takes true arrogance to admit that you don't understand something.

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