In November 2008, Proposition 8 was passed with a simple majority and added an article to the California Constitution which read “Only marriage between a man and woman is valid or recognized in California”. A law was placed on the people that 7 million people wanted and 6.4 million fought against.
The practice that half of a population can dictate the course of a State or Country needs be strongly re-evaluated. 51% may be a majority, but it is not consensus. If we had 100 people, it means 49 are doing something for the other half. The marginally-winning team is dictating the rules.
Amendments and laws that change the livelihood of how we function and work need to be passed by a significant 2/3 majority. When you have 1/2 of a state or country disagreeing with a policy or decision, take it back to the drawing board.
Tags: California Constitution, Politics
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 8:40 am and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
This is a tough discussion but still necessary… I was trying to remember the Robert’s Rules of Order, which we used during senate, and 2/3 vote would be necessary for things such as calling on a motions by the legislature or ending debate etc… What is difficult is when you need 2/3 vote in support of a law (which is what is being highlighted)… . A 50% majority is still very powerful because sometimes the majority can simply be 22% (arbitrary number) and for the majority to gain support from different groups does show how important it is for people coming together and sometimes even setting aside differences. Yet 2/3 vote is important in situations such as amendments to the constitution…maybe a solution would be to consider 2/3 vote necessary for different types of political laws.. i.e. social gets 2/3 and financial (taxes) get 50% votes… but then how do we differentiate which has more value?