Washington State legal interpretations inserted below -- note that IANAL. On 14 Oct 2004 at 20:43 PDT, Brian Olson wrote: > > On Oct 12, 2004, at 8:34 PM, James Cooper wrote: > >> I'm a activist in Washington state who is interested in eliminating >> the plurality system here. We have a state-wide inititiative trying >> to get on the ballot in 2005 (http://www.irvwa.org/). It proposes >> using IRV. In addition, it would eliminate the general primaries in >> Washington, and just use IRV in November for all the candidates across >> the parties. >> >> I've been doing petitioning for I-318, but I've also been reading a >> variety of information on the web, and have found the arguments >> against IRV compelling. However, most of the objections are technical >> in nature. > > My objections to this initiative are legalistic in nature. Given the > undetermined nature of what the "best" election method is, how hard > would it be to amend this initiative in the future? > > Does Washington state have an implicit rule that laws enacted by > initiative cannot be overruled by the legislature? I didn't see any > explicit mechanism to that effect contained in the initiative itself as > California initiatives sometimes include.
Washington state has an explicit, not implicit, law that laws passed by initiative cannot be modified by the state legislature for 2 years except by a supermajority of 2/3 or greater. However, initiative laws can be changed via another initiative within that time period. Ted -- Send real replies to ted stern at u dot washington dot edu Frango ut patefaciam -- I break that I may reveal ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info