More Legislative Activity to Place “Super Majority” Before Voters

February 2002 - In last Tuesday’s election, 17 school districts in King County placed 30 measures before voters. Twenty-five of those measures passed, five failed. Of those five, the average number of positive votes was 58 percent—a margin considered a landslide victory in most other elections and well above the 50 percent needed to build a ball field or prison in the state, but just under the 60 percent Super Majority needed to build schools.

Newspaper editors from Seattle to Spokane are running editorials about the need to abolish the 70 year-old constitutional provision for supermajority. Legislators in Olympia also are discussing the requirement for schools. A proposed constitutional amendment that would allow school measures to pass with simple majorities has been approved by both the House and Senate education committees. Now the issue must win two-thirds approval in both House and Senate before being placed on a statewide ballot where voters would decide whether the supermajority rule is abolished.