<personal opinion rant>
I’ve noticed that, lately, there have been two resolutions that have been passed by fairly substantial margins only to be repealed within a few weeks. Granted, the overturned resolutions weren’t perfect, but, given that they were written by those who probably don’t have any legal training and little to no diplomatic experience to be voted on by several thousand people each with their own ideas about how things should be done, they were pretty good.
So, what’s going on?
I can think of two reasons why this is happening. The first, which has been discussed and lampshaded in Resolution #122, “Read the Resolution Act,” is that people aren’t reading the resolutions when they come to vote and vote based on the title alone. When the repeal comes up, they assume that the original resolution, which they didn’t read in the first place, wasn’t very good and vote for the repeal.
The second possibility is a little less cynical. People might not feel that strongly about the original resolution but voted for it because it seemed like it was the best that could be presented at that time. When the repeal comes, they decide to vote for it hoping that someone can do better.
A repeal is essentially a second vote on a resolution, so it’s very confusing when the resolution gets passed by a good margin then gets repealed soon after also by a good margin. Voting multiple times on something that was passed the first time is a waste of time for all WA members. If this is happening because of reason one, then there isn’t much that can be done currently (maybe the NS folks could come up with a way to prevent people from voting if it’s obvious that they didn’t read the resolution, but I don’t know how that could be done, and I’m not going to make any suggestions for that). If this is happening because of reason two, the best solution is to vote against the resolution. If you have reservations that cause you to vote against a resolution the second time, you probably shouldn’t have voted for it the first time.
While we would all like bulletproof resolutions, pieces of legislation that can survive repeal attempts, loophole seeking rules lawyers, and anything else that the writers can think of to stop, it probably isn’t going to happen. The best thing to do until we can put Kevlar on the legislation is to vote for legislation that is good and vote against anything that causes you to go, “I don’t know about that,” even if it seems like the best thing that can be written at this time.
I'd like to know what my fellow WA members think about this.
</personal opinion rant>
. . . what's the worst that could happen?
