Hi, I'm new to the forum but a concerned American and needed a place to voice my concern. Hopefully this forum will eventually be found and read by someone who can or will affect a change.

Obscure ballot measures hide the issue proposed to the people. More to the point; the way many Initiatives, House Measures, and Referendums are written (specifically to amend or repeal earlier measures) makes it nearly impossible for a voter to accurately understand that which they are requested to decide without spending hours doing research and potentially hiring a lawyer.

I personally make it a point to read the entire text of a measure before voting on it. I personally feel that it is irresponsible to say yes or no to a ballot item after only reading a summary that may or may not expose underlying flaws in its design or in the logic used to enforce the spirit for which the proposal is meant to address. If I do not have time to read the full text of a measure I usually don't vote on it at all. Instead I leave the section blank. I try not to be influenced either way by television advertising but instead to apply my own critical thinking and analysis to the issue through reading the text of the proposal.

Case in point:
Washington State Initiative 920 on the 11/07/06 ballot
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/initiatives/text/I920.pdf

notice that this is written to say
"
1 AN ACT Relating to taxation; creating new sections; and repealing
2 RCW 83.100.010, 83.100.020, 83.100.040, 83.100.046, 83.100.047,
3 83.100.050, 83.100.060, 83.100.070, 83.100.080, 83.100.090, 83.100.095,
4 83.100.110, 83.100.120, 83.100.130, 83.100.140, 83.100.150, 83.100.160,
5 83.100.170, 83.100.180, 83.100.190, 83.100.200, 83.100.210, 83.100.220,
6 83.100.900, 83.100.901, 83.100.902, 83.100.903, 83.100.904, and
7 83.100.905.
"
No where in this Initiative does the original text of the RCWs being repealed appear. Please note I am just picking on this particular initiative as an example and that my gripe is the way in which all ballot measures these days seem to make reference to older sections of law or code but do not give the reader a clear way to see what the new compiled code would look like.

Another example is when they say things like " Strike line 30 and replace it with 'un-taxable in terms of domain but not in terms of public or private use' ". How does the reader, the voter, the decision maker know what the impact of this change will be without re-reading the old law and in their own mind substituting the new phrase when they reach the appropriate place.

I have a possible solution for this but I'm open to others. Mine is to impose the following rules:
1. Any measure that will end up on a ballot for registered voters to decide upon which would modify or repeal or amend any previous law, code statute or constitution or any other legal document must present a fully compiled and re-written document which does not make footnote references to other documents but instead incorporates the full text of the newly proposed law into a single document which a normal literate American individual with an 11th grade high school education could consume and comprehend and understand. Only then does making a decision to enact or reject this measure make sense.
2. Any ballot must be presented to a voter along with the full text as described above so that they may read and comprehend before making a decision.

I don't think we need to put this information directly on the ballot and have an unnecessarily long ballot form, I simply think that if I get my absentee ballot in the mail that it should include with it the full text of any measures as separate documents in the same envelope. I should have this information so that I may read analyze and make a good decision based on all the pertinent information, and not base my decisions on a marketing campaign or a summary which may leave out important details about the implementation of new measures.

I'm just wondering.. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I don't think it should take a lawyer to understand the law. Isn't that what "Common Law" was about and isn't that what our country was founded on?