Despite the many cynical voices clamoring for corruption pure and simple as the motive, Buck Godot really nailed the crux IMO.
The legislature is made up of individual constituencies that each lean pretty solidly R or D. The vote for or against a state-wide ballot initiative is conducted on a whole-state basis.
Just as we saw the Ds win the 2016 popular vote for President while the Rs overwhelmingly took Congress, how you subdivide how you keep score matters hugely to the actual outcome.
I don’t have the data on how each of OK’s statehouse districts voted on those two ballot initiatives. But I’m willing to bet a few bucks that the votes of the legislators on those two sorta-overriding bills pretty well mirrors how their respective districts voted on the original initiatives.
Which is yet further proof that geographic distribution of legislative seats is a stupid anachronism left over from the horse-drawn 1700s. IMO the one and only time it could legitimately be applicable in the 21st Century is in laws or regulations that are explicitly geographic in design.
Second option:
As in so many things, during changing times the public can get aways out ahead of the legislature. yes, OK is a very backwards state. But it’s public can still get ahead of its even more backwards legislators.
The public did indeed pass those fairly modest initiatives. But by a fairly modest margin. Which leaves plenty of room for even honest sober politicians to argue that the change was too much, too fast, and motivated either by poor thinking or by trickery.
Here in FL we passed a constitutional amendment last time around that is now widely understood to have been a trap by the Forces of Reactionary Corporate Evil, despite looking like something that was forward looking and consumer friendly.
OK reps can use a similar argument to claim the forces of drug-sellers and wannabe marijuana legalizers led a charge that hoodwinked the good people of OK. Some of which may even be truthful. Or at least honestly held opinion.
I googled for this and all I found were stories about how Amendment 1 was not passed in last November’s election, making the bolded part and the ensuing brief exchange very confusing reading.
Back on Nov 9th (the day after the election) I had looked at the FL Board of Election’s site’s vote count. The count was 51% in favor of Amendment 1, and 49% against.
Between that outcome and the Trump fiasco I tuned out of politics for a couple of weeks.
So I completely missed the fact that in FL it takes 60% to pass a constitutional amendment. So despite Yes getting more votes, No won.
I’ve had that outcome backwards for 10 months now. :smack:
The good news is the state got the better outcome. The bad news is we showed - again - that 51% of the public can be hoodwinked by a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign.
Thanks again for clearing that up for both the Dope and for me.
You’re welcome, LSLGuy, but it was really just me seeking to be de-confused.
Imagine if that thing had passed, and you had a constitutional amendment that bad; oy! And the one comment about how if it passed, it’d be almost impossible to undo… Aye; y’all dodged a fucking ballistic missile there.
