Oh, and about the super-majority: it is undemocratic, draconian, unfair, illegitimate, ridiculous, and assanine.

If I am going to choose between a pay raise or keeping my property taxes down, the choice is pretty clear.

And I don’t speak for DFV and I don’t know or care what position the Evergreen Freedom Foundation has on this nor would I ever make my judgments based on being contrary to their talking points.

Perhaps super majorities should be required for new stadiums, I have not looked at that as an issue.

WEA members own homes too you know. If a school district isn’t performing well, they’ll vote “no” on the levy too.

I don’t know what your particular axe to grind against WEA is all about, but I would hate for DFV to give the Evergreen Freedom Foundation another talking point to bandy about.

If we follow your logic to its ultimate conclusion, than the we must have a super majority requirement for building of new football stadiums, since there are well over 100,000 Seahawk fans. Sadly, super majorities are not required for new stadiums, but they are for school levies. That seems ridiculous, and anti-democratic.

I want to be clear that I am not against paying property taxes for the schools. If the schools need money, I am all for giving it to them. I just want the process to be equitable to all those involved.

If 90% or more of the eligible voters voted, this conversation would be moot because at that point the “tyranny of the minority” would be so small as to not even be a concern (for me at least).

But unfortunately that is not the case.

So, make your town less livable and maybe your property taxes (and your property values) will stagnate. Will you be happy then?

And why should the WEA draw your ire more than anyone else? You could say the same of all union members, who generally vote in favor of progressive levies. Or democrats. Should we have a supermajority requirement just because a majority of the state’s voters are registered dems, and therefore more likely to vote for levies? (I’m not saying that’s the case - I don’t know - it’s just an example.)

Couldn’t you just as easily say that WEA members better understand the needs of the school system? You could use your argument in favor or against any supposed voting block. For all you know, there might be a sizable portion of WEA members who votes like you, out of anger at their rising property taxes.

Let’s look at this another way:

Here is where being an accountant gets me in trouble.

There are 3.4 million eligible voters in WA. Let’s say 45% (I think that is reasonable) of them actually vote on a levy. That means 1.53 million actually vote.

Now if you add the 100,000 WEA members, plus their spouses, voting age children and friends who support them all together and assume they are almost always going to vote and vote for increased funding if there is a possible pay raise involved, let say (I think conservatively) that represents 175,000 “yes” votes for increased funding.

If you divide that into the people actually voting you get 11.44% of “automatic” yes votes.

So if the rest of the people actually voting are 55% against, 45% for a particular levy that means 745250 people vote no. That leaves 784750 vote yes and the levy passes without the super-majority. (hope my math is correct here).
The numbers here are to make my point and not necessarily reflect what actually occurs (no one can know that for sure).

It seems to me that my no vote was usurped by the tyranny of the biased minority who wanted a pay raise. My vote was worth less than the teacher’s vote since he/she can and will vote as a block for their pay raise.

As an analogy, similar undemocratic results often occur with regard to corporations and their shareholder voting. If enough of the shareholder voters get together and vote as a block (very often the upper management of the company), they control the outcome. It is not democratic by any stretch of the imagination.

Therefore a simple majority is not democratic when you have a large block of people, all with the same special interest in the outcome.

The WA state Constitution was amended in 1944 to require a 60% supermajority voting “yes” for local bond measures to pass. This amendment was pushed by large timber, mining and railroad interests, which owned big swathes of land in Washington state and wanted to constrain local governments’ from raising their property taxes. There’s your large, influential (and monied) voting block - not the WEA.

And no one person’s vote should count more than any other’s (my yes vote in a 60% supermajority requirement is worth only 66.6% of your no vote).

Supermajorities are undemocratic, and need to go.

But since 98% already pass with the super-majority requirement in place, even this argument is superfluous.

I am wholeheartedly for fully funding our public school system but I am not in favor of what amounts to a special interest group, namely the enormous voting block of WEA, determining what constitutes full funding.

IMO, this amendment was a solution without a problem.