The judges don't care. They're not impartial. They want the state to win more often than not. I mean, who pays their salary and what looks better than being part of law and order?
It can also be intentional deception. Look at the recent PA vote on retirement age of judges removing the language that provided voters info on the current age limit.
> Shall the measure amending the Santa Clara Valley Water District Ordinance 11-01 to limit Board members to four successive four-year terms be adopted?
Term limits? Heck yes! Voters agreed: term limits are A GOOD THING. Measure A passed!
What wasn't mentioned AT ALL, anywhere in the question put to the voters, is that Santa Clara Valley Water District board members are already limited to 2 terms in office. This was extending term limits from 2 consecutive to 4 consecutive terms. It was getting rid of/weakening term limits. A blatant misrepresentation on the ballot.
Who wrote the text of Measure A? Why the Santa Clara Valley Water District board members who wanted their terms extended, of course.
Here in Washington, an "easy" fix for that is that the initiatives get a column for the "Yes" side and a column for the "no" side, in our voting booklets that we get in the mail with the ballots. But IIRC CA is still in person voting, right?
WA has been mail-in voting for years, so I vote at home with the pamphlet on the table and a cup of coffee.
We have vote-by-mail as well, but the number of people who actually read the pamphlet and make an informed decision (rather than just briefly scan the ballot at the last minute) is small enough to matter.
I didn't look into the details, but schools with poor attendance can have their "excess" local revenues claimed by the state (state law specifies what excess means). Charter schools don't have local funding (and can play games to pick their students).
The measure above appears to be for adjusting a relief measure for the elderly and disabled downwards when their obligation is reduced (which if it only reduces the relief, could reduce it to 0 over time).
Effective, clear expression needs training, practice and attention. Homo sapiens write as we do because in only 5,000 years we haven't evolved to write naturally and must labor at it.
Clear writing also needs clear thought, obviously. "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."
(Though to be fair, almost all talking used to be done in an interactive setting, where you can ask clarification questions.)
Not exactly big money interests.
I don’t think that’s true of the Second Amendment specifically. It was written by a bunch of men who had just used guns they had lying around their farms to form militias and overthrow their government. I don’t think it’s a great mystery what they meant when they wrote the Second Amendment.
Insofar as the prefatory clause causes one to stumble, it was a common construct at the time tk have a “why” or explanatory clause prefacing an operative clause: https://www.nyulawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/NYUL.... You read it exactly like you would read the following:
“Free political debate being necessary to the functioning of a free state, the freedom of speech shall not be abridged.”
That pretty seriously overstates the case: The American Revolution started out that way, but as time went on, the Continental Army acquired serious artillery and became reasonably professional — thanks largely to Henry Knox; Baron von Steuben; and the Marquis de La Fayette — and the decisive factor at Yorktown was the intervention of a French naval squadron and expeditionary force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Army
https://www.historynet.com/arming-revolution-continental-arm...
Personally, I think we would have been better off without the 2nd amendment, and the framers of the constitution may not have foreseen the role it has come to play in politics (if so, it would be far from the only case), but I cannot find much ambiguity in it.
Also there is no "no sanding Army" requirement. There is only a requirement that the army can only be funded for 2 years ahead, presumably to require ongoing consent from Legislature, to prevent a Chancellor Hitler-type situation or a President becoming King by getting a huge multi year funding and then turning against the future Legislature and the country.
And the War of 1812 taught President Madison the danger of being under militarized and over-reliant on militias.
Many Founders believed a standing army to be an inherently corrupting force (if you have a warrior class, sooner or later they will make you go to war) and thought America would be better without one. Whether or not that could have been true in the abstract became irrelevant because the need to perpetually defend territory meant that there was never an opportunity to disband the Continental Army.
The Second Amemdent's in there because without it, the states wouldn't have been willing to ratify a Constitution that allowed the federal government to take their guns away. After all, they had just won a war against a monarch an ocean away; they weren't about to give their power of defense to an executive half a continent away. Remember, there was no guarantee a Constitution was going to happen at all; quite a few compromises and curveballs in that document are there because every single state had the option of rejecting the whole thing and being their own country. Many Founding Fathers envisioned defense of the US would look like individual states generally handling their own affairs, and a national army only being mobilized in the event of a national threat (however, practically speaking, that didn't come to pass... No sooner was the Constitution ratified than Washington led the Continental Army to force the citizens of western Pennsylvania to pay federal taxes).
Gun regulation was properly recognized as a state authority for most of the country's history prior to the Civil War and varied wildly from state to state, with many being significantly more restrictive than modern law. It's only with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (and the Due Process clause, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law") that the Second Amendment ties the hands of state governments in the same way it tied the hands of the federal government. This restriction has been re-interpreted over the decades, but broadly speaking that's how we got from a 1700s Philadelphia that banned gun ownership for some immigrants to the modern interpretation where even tracking who owns a firearm might be considered an abridgment of the right of ownership.
One advantage the chosen approach has is, in a sense, interpretive simplicity, even though in practice it strips much authority from the states and moves it up to the federal level.
"A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed"
Seems nice and straightforwards, right? Trouble is, that's just one of many versions. Different states ratified slightly different versions of the Second Amendment, the main difference being the presence of absence of different commas. For example, see this version from the National Archives [0]
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
[0] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...
One of the catalysts to writing the Constitution in the first place was when a bunch of former soldiers took the guns they had lying around, tried to seize government munitions, and overthrow the Massachusetts government. The federal government couldn't raise an army to put down Shay's rebellion, and had to use local/private militia.
So it cuts both ways.
Flesch Reading Ease score: -24 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: impossible to comprehend.
Gunning Fog: 40.7 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: EXTREMELY difficult to read.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 35.7 Grade level: College Graduate and above.
The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college
The SMOG Index: 25 Grade level: graduate college
Automated Readability Index: 41.7 Grade level: College graduate
Linsear Write Formula : 57.5 Grade level: College Graduate and above.
Flesch Reading Ease score: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/flesch-kincaid-readi...
Gunning Fog: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/gunning-fog-score/
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/flesch-kincaid-grade...
The Coleman-Liau Index: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/coleman-liau-index
The SMOG Index: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/smog-index/
Automated Readability Index: https://www.textcompare.org/readability/automated-readabilit...
Linsear Write Formula : https://www.textcompare.org/readability/linsear-write/
The site actually seems to have quite a few different methods available, if you look at the footer.
This might actually help me with some of the writing in my own blog posts and such, to check whether any paragraphs don't get too convoluted.
Oh, also there's this site, which attempts to show you the particular sentences that might be hard to read: https://hemingwayapp.com/
> "The text achieves a minimum score of 45 on the Flesch reading ease test as computed in subsection (5) or an equivalent score on any other test comparable in result and approved by the office;"
So absolutely yes. When you're asking people to vote on something, and you actually want informed voters, I unquestionably want ballot measures to be understandable by everyone that reads them.
But it is reasonable to have these sorts of things understandable to the average high school graduate and to the average retiree (different schooling, different mental statuses). And by average, I truly mean that the range of average should be able to read it so that comprehension should be widespread.
If your average high school graduate cannot comprehend it, your wording is too difficult, your education too poor, your document was written by people without the skills to talk plainly, or a combination of these.
Very few of us have a lawyer in our back-pocket nowadays. Sure, laws regulating some kinds of financial transactions and contracts are necessarily going to be complicated and hard to understand. But the general rule should be "If the law isn't something an ordinary person could be expected to know, then they aren't bound by it". That would put an end to clever-clever legal drafting.
Though actually what they are saying is "I put the text in these algorithms and got these scores". It is left to others to draw conclusions like I did above.
Anatole France
I have spent the equivalent of a house deposit on immigration lawyers just to make sure paperwork is filed correctly and I know what I am allowed / not allowed to do. Many people simply can't afford that.
But it should be simplified if it's intended to be read and comprehended by the general public. This is an issue now with terms of service and contracts, to the point where people who cannot comprehend the language are being exploited.
> "The text achieves a minimum score of 45 on the Flesch reading ease test as computed in subsection (5) or an equivalent score on any other test comparable in result and approved by the office;"
If possible, on a case by case basis. If it's difficult, we lock people in a room for 8 hours a day from age 5 to 17, and don't let them leave until they understand. If it still doesn't work, we get rid of the law.
This approach does wonders in Switzerland and in Belgium.
It's a boon to EU to get rid of most of native English speakers, btw. See this opinion by a famous Belgian philosopher on the matter [1].
[1] https://www.brusselstimes.com/290948/forced-to-speak-in-a-fo...
There is never a good reason for using language this obtuse, but there's lots of bad reasons.
This measure in particular seems engineered to be just clear enough to be upheld by a judge, but also sufficiently obfuscated so that the public doesn't know what it's actually voting on.
Sure but if you literally cannot understand it, it may be difficult to determine whether voting against it means voting yes or no.
The main reason for the verbal atrocity is legislators had to cram a more or less complete description into a single sentence, per constitutional requirements.
Or the other common reason, that they campaigned on getting a measure to the ballot that has voter support, but they don't want it to pass. The first thing you do is come up with a confusing text with extra points for double negatives, and you follow that up with a confusing media campaign.
You may fail, and it passes with 87%, but sometimes if you work hard enough you can get Illinois to vote down a progressive income tax.
Here's what I think it says: "This constitutional amendment authorizes the legislature to set the ad valorem taxes total reduction amounts that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of an elderly or disabled person in order to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maintenance maximum compressed rate and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead."
- Mark Twain (via The Economist Style Guide)
Can you show us some "long readable phrases"?
"He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if he yielded, he should be obliged to renounce that hatred with which the actions of other men had filled his soul through so many years, and which pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or to be conquered; and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had been begun between his viciousness and the goodness of that man." (Les Miserables, Hapgood translation)
Note that this is also probably easier to understand in context - standalone, I can see how it could be a bit confusing.
The rule is, write clearly. And if it’s not clear, write it more clearly. That’s pretty much it.
If you need guidance, Cormack McCarthy is the professor.
In Romanian you have "sentences" (noun - verb - etc) and "phrases" (multiple sentences together, basically they're separated only by periods). I think in English grammar "sentences" are called clauses?
Anyway, Romanian "sentences" are generally short, and if they're not, for sure that's bad style. Romanian "phrases" can be long, but depending on the structure of the "sentences" and the logical separation between them, they can be quite clear.
Maybe the same distinction makes sense here? "Sentences" (clauses?) should be relatively clear and short and somewhat independent, "phrases" can be long, but only if their individual components ("sentences") are of high quality on their own and if they're connected in clear ways.
But in some sense this is art, not science; it shouldn’t be analyzed too much :)
I thought we were discussing law, not art. If legal drafting is to be compared with art, only art experts will gain.
Agree when it comes to law - utility trumps art.
When they are used to group ideas, commas and semicolons tend to encourage long, complex utterances that might be ambiguous, and at any rate are harder to parse. If it's important that an utterance be clear, just use simple language.
Expressing complex ideas in simple language is hard - you have to get the ideas perfectly clear in your head. If you still can't express those ideas in simple language, try again to get them clear. Don't draft any laws until you can do that.
You could say that about books as well? I mean, if you forget what it is about when you're about to read the end ...
Eumerations can be long and still easy to read especially if using 1) ... 2) ... style. And ; clauses too like the sibling comment says
https://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/quotes/it-was-the-best-of...
Also, how do you read paragraphs? Don't you have to keep the entire meaning in your head?
I think of sentences as cutting information into bite-sized chunks. Paragraphs separate ideas, like different plates separate flavours.
[1] With some exceptions, such as enumerations.
1: https://ballotpedia.org/Texas_Proposition_1,_Property_Tax_Li...
BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
SECTION 1. Section 1-b, Article VIII, Texas Constitution,
is amended by adding Subsection (d-2) to read as follows:
(d-2) Notwithstanding Subsections (d) and (d-1) of this
section, the legislature by general law may provide for the
reduction of the amount of a limitation provided by Subsection (d)
of this section and applicable to a residence homestead for a tax
year to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year
in the maximum compressed rate, as defined by general law, or a
successor rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for
general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the
homestead. A general law enacted under this subsection may take
into account the difference between the tier one maintenance and
operations rate for the 2018 tax year and the maximum compressed
rate for the 2019 tax year applicable to a residence homestead and
any reductions in subsequent tax years before the tax year in which
the general law takes effect in the maximum compressed rate
applicable to a residence homestead.
The problem is in the effect of the law.
Article 8 Section 1-b (d) says that an elderly or disabled person's property taxes (on their home) can't be increased if the money would go to public schools. It also establishes the concept that their current (unincreasable) educational property taxes are transferable property; they can take this "limitation" with them if they move.
However, while it establishes the concept, it doesn't enact anything. Section 1-b (d) doesn't say that people can take their limitation with them if they move. It says that the legislature is free to make a law allowing them to do so:
> The legislature, by general law, may provide for the transfer of all or a proportionate amount of a limitation provided by this subsection for a person who qualifies for the limitation and establishes a different residence homestead.
It also has two clauses, which I assume were added by amendment, specifying a reduced limitation for the year 1997 and for the year 2015. I didn't notice any clause authorizing the legislature to enact this type of reduction, but they seem to have managed to do it all the same.
Anyway, the new subsection also doesn't make any changes to the limitation. Like the clause about transferring your limitation from one home to another home, this one authorizes the legislature to modify the limitation under certain circumstances:
> Notwithstanding Subsections (d) and (d-1) of this section, the legislature by general law may provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation provided by Subsection (d) of this section and applicable to a residence homestead for a tax year to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate, as defined by general law, or a successor rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the homestead.
Bad writing isn't the reason this is difficult to understand. The reason is that there are too many layers of indirection; the system itself is difficult to understand, and therefore any description of it will also be difficult to understand.
The only effect of this law appears to be to authorize the state legislature to pass laws. They could already do that. What is the effect supposed to be?
What might be more helpful is that ballot initiatives should have a stricter template based on type. If you're changing tax code it could be:
- Initiative Type: Taxes
- Affects: The homesteads of elders in X, Y, for Z
- Results: Taxes are raised
- Description: As stated above
- Definitions: Homesteads - X, Elders - Y, ad valorem - etc
Of course this is essentially making the same conclusions as the title which is that standard writing/legalese is really no longer acceptable given the complexity of many modern laws and incentivized parties.
What they seem to be saying, if I parsed it correctly:
"We now get to include tax breaks from the previous year as a factor in property value when taxing the elderly."
That seems awful. I kind of get the hyper-technicality they're going for, but it still seems like they're sticking it to seniors... again, if I understood it correctly.
One thing local government politicians love to do is pass tax exemptions for old people, disabled people, veterans and combinations of the three. It’s a type of patronage, that lets Mayor Good ‘ol Boy drop by the senior center and VFW and pull in the votes.
Property taxes are essentially allocating the levy based on your proportional share of value. When they get out of control in small towns the effect is a two-tier system where some people pay dramatically more.
The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of
a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled
to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead.
Most of the referendums that come up in my local jurisdiction are often criticized for their hostile phrasing.
Seems a bit weird, why not just not do said thing, why is there a need for a law banning it? Is it just to make things difficult for the other side (presumably democrats)?
Why not though? Do laypeople not have to follow these laws/contracts? Or do we expect everyone in the modern age to have a pocket lawyer available to them?
If the average person can't understand the rules that they must follow then there's really no such thing as "law and order", there's only selective enforcement.
_ They start with an agreement drafted by one person and then many people propose or insist on edits, but because the process is a negotiation the tendency is not to rewrite the agreement but instead to tack on language from another author in a way that is confusing. Sometimes you end up saying the same thing twice in slightly different ways because two people wanted to say the thing in two ways and you want to just move on in a negotiation.
_ You often work from a complicated agreement that has worked in the past and has all sorts of phrases and clauses from previous versions. People hate to change things and if they do make a change it is usually to add more.
Also to be fair, even if the language was perfectly easy to understand, there's probably at best a 70-30 shot the voters pick the right choice, since people lack the critical thinking skills, and education in public policy and economics to choose what's best.
I have a relative who worked in bill drafting for a legislature. The structure of this stuff is sort of it’s own art driven by the deadlines as a lot of legislation is associated with things with deadlines like budget bills.
This isn’t the king’s English, but it isn’t egregiously unclear if you understand what it’s about.
> Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
Voters had to choose from one of the following:
- Remain a member of the European Union - Leave the European Union
> The constitutional amendment that lets the legislature lower the limit of taxes that elderly or disabled people must pay for elementary and secondary public school purposes on their residence homestead. The new limit will reflect any lowering of the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those same purposes on that homestead.
It's a shame that I did not realize it was never about right or wrong but rather interests until decades later.
So if you view it from a different perspective such as who will benefit from such wording, you will for sure get a much clearer picture.
Was there any documentation with before/after examples. That is what this needs. Taxes are complicated. Examples are great for getting your head around it.
It could be argued the reason the law is successful (like many other “successful” social frameworks in history) is the ignorance of the masses.
High minded gossip, hyping story of forever human life and expansion is a human tradition.
Secondarily, they don't have a concept of macros except in a very ad-hoc sense. This means that they are afraid of macro use because they do not know the concepts of macro hygiene.
This is likely due to intentional creating a moat around the industry.
tl;dr Legalese is impenetrable because it uses the equivalent of Forth but POSIWID
The advantage of natural languages is self-referential infinite recursion is basically fine. The downside is, no compile-time checks for logical inconsistencies.
> The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school purposes on the residence homestead of a person who is elderly or disabled to reflect any statutory reduction from the preceding tax year in the maximum compressed rate of the maintenance and operations taxes imposed for those purposes on the homestead.
I have an Ivy League education and I still could hardly understand it, and I still think some of the language is ambiguous (i.e. I think "the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount" can be interpreted both ways).
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/watchdog/2022/03/25/the-lang...