Why WA voters rebuffed Dems on I-638, even in blue wave election
www.seattletimes.com
As a blue wave washed across the U.S., Washington voters passed an initiative that the state’s Democratic Party opposed. There are multiple ways to understand why.

Opponents say [Washington state] voters were persuaded at least partly because the initiative and its boosters exploited deep-seated prejudices and misunderstandings about transgender people to erode their rights.

    • zero924@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      This is the question I keep asking when this comes up. How is this a legislative issue at all?

      I know realistically it’s because conservatives love big government when it’s hurting people they don’t like, but the sports associations already had rules based off of actual research and an understanding of the issue, so it makes no sense to put it to a vote for millions of knee-jerk reactions to control instead of leaving it to people who actually know what they’re doing.

      But it’s just another part of the far-right’s war on expertise that they’ve been waging since at least Nixon.

    • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
      12·
      3 days ago

      Well, one obvious reason is transphobia and let’s not pretend that wasn’t the motivation for some voters. But the other reason for some is backlash. They see local schools and sport clubs that try to decide this on their own be accused of transphobia and pressured by loud minorities into a different decision, so they want to protect the communities from this harassment with state level rules, since small groups like schools are much easier to bully compared to the state.