[EM] Re: Approval vs. IRV

[Ted Stern]

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
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	ted stern at u dot washington dot edu

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