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I'm not in the US so I've no dog in this race only curiousity.

I can understand allowing a governor to change the text of a bill. But I cannot understand allowing them to sign those changes into law. It seems like that would mean they could creatively reverse the meaning of any bill.

It seems like a governor should be able to approve the text as written, or change it and send it back.

What am I missing?

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The original intention was to allow for what is called a "line-item veto." Let's say you had a bill (and this is not uncommon) with a lot of basically unrelated provisions. It creates programs A, B and C. This would allow the governor to approve A and C but not B, and would prevent the sort of "horse-trading" that legislators like to do ("I'll support your pet idea if you support mine").

That was the idea. But Wisconsin has twisted into something else entirely. Arguably, the idea was not a good one to begin with, anyway.

Okay that makes a kind of sense in the case stated but even there seems open to creative abuse in cases where those lines are not wholly independent. Thanks for the information.

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