Comments

1
So you're sharing this with us so that we'll be especially outraged when the state supreme court upholds Eyeman?
2
huh, usually I get into 'original intent' arguments with tea baggers who like to pretend that since white male slaveholders wrote the constitution, we should interpret modern law accordingly. Kind of like insisting we use leeches to heal cancer or bring back dueling to settle arguments.
Is there really no other way of arguing this issue? Like it's a really stupid way to get things done and deliberately introduces political stagnation? Tim Eyeman wants to turn WA state into a libertarian fantasy island on the same level as Somalia or Haiti, and he has convinced the voting publc (a minority) to force the hand of legislators who know this will crash the bus.
I can't believe we have to rely on this argument of 'what would great grand pappy do?' instead of looking objectively at the results of 2/3s majority and pull back from the brink.
3
aka GTFO Tim Eyman. You suck.
4
This is actually really interesting. Good work, slog law team!
5
@2 Actually, he just wants to give us California's budget woes.

Jeebus, even that notorious Socialist hell-hole Colorado voted to partially overturn their budget limiting TABOR amendment.
6
@2, Words have meanings, the words were used in more than one instance, and their meaning defined.

This isn't a "what would grand pappy do" question. This is a pretty basic question about a phrase used in the law.
We could just start assigning new an exotic meanings to random words in the state constitution by majority vote (as Eyman apparently did) or we can follow and amend the constitution when we want the law to mean something else.

@4, we already have that problem, we keep cutting and the state keeps getting sued.
7
This should be @5, we already have that problem, we keep cutting and the state keeps getting sued.
8
can you clarify? just because the rejected "higher floors" as evidenced above, that would not invalidate the idea that the framer's still wanted a floor. even a specific instance (new counties) only demonstrates they did not want the higher floor for that one action. (playing devil's advocate here)

9
More importantly, look at the ugly font on that constitution, so dated! Can we update it to Helvetica or something??!
10
If this gets tossed, is Eyman going to be forced to run exceptionally specific tax limitations every year?

A) Good luck getting the fat corporate cash unless you're limiting or cutting corporate taxes.

B) Good luck getting overt corporate tax cuts or limits past the electorate in this climate.
11
As @8 suggests, your analysis is incomplete and lacking. While you're correct that the framers "explicitly rejected higher thresholds when adopting this phrase", that does not mean they rejected the possibility of higher thresholds by later vote. At most, all you've shown is that the floor could not be below some percentage for different parts of the constitution.

The wording of the constitution does not say โ€œa new county shall be created when a majority of the electors voting shall vote for such division." Such a wording would demand both floor and ceiling. Consider a non-legal example, where two parents each give a child a condition that must be met before a desired outcome can occur. Parent 1 says "unless you empty the top half of the dishwasher, you cannot go to the concert." Parent 2 says "unless you empty the entire dishwasher, you cannot go to the concert." The first parent's statement does not preclude the second from setting a higher threshold. Organizationally, this happens all the time. Mandates from upper management are made stricter or set to a higher bar by lower management. Unless such action is preempted by upper management, such a lower threshold goal is not restrictive.

Going back to the case you argue, it's clear that some wanted to make the requirement more strict for modifying boundaries by raising the lower bound. The fact that the lower bound was kept at the simple majority does not preclude that it could, in the future, be mandated at a state-level to meet an even higher bar. Proving that requires more than what you've shown.

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