Comment by tssva | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tssva | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think the voters intent is clear. The question was whether the legislature should be able to make the change not whether they should. If I lived in California I would have voted to provide them the option but that doesn't necessarily mean I think they should. I would expect further debate around the subject at the time legislation is introduced.

Let's accept your premise that a vote for the referendum was in all cases a vote for the change. The referendum requires 2/3rds of the representatives of the people to vote to affect the change. It can certainly be argued that since this level of support was included in the referendum and the referendum itself failed to garner this level of support then the representatives should not vote for the change.

  The referendum requires 2/3rds of the representatives of the people to vote to affect the change

1) this wasn't a referendum. It was a Legislative Statute.

2) it needed only a simple majority.

3) California DST implementation has been in violation of CA law for decades. CA law has been late April to late September since 1949.

4) to actually change DST still requires an additional 2/3rds majority vote in BOTH houses of the Legislature in the same session.

Yes, this is kind of the issue with a lot of things (props/measures) we get on the ballots. Some are worth a direct vote, others should be phrased in the way you're describing as "this is an issue we'd like you to take up, research, and debate".

I personally find it annoying that sometimes we end having to vote directly on things that really fall under the job of our representatives.

I think all democracies would benefit from referendums/petitions that simply force the legislature to put the issue up for debate/vote.

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