> Evers’s veto is part of a dubious Wisconsin tradition. In 1975, Gov. Patrick Lucey struck the word “not” from the phrase “not less than,” reversing its meaning. In the 1980s, Govs. Tony Earl and Tommy Thompson crossed out individual letters to create entirely new words. And in 2005, Gov. Jim Doyle reappropriated over $400 million from its intended use by striking all but 20 words from a 752-word passage, creating a new sentence bearing no resemblance to the language approved by the legislature.
Random trivia: Memes in that format are known as "speed of lobsters" memes, where you take a screenshot of some text/post/tweet/whatever and then delete/hide words and letters to make up completely different sentences.
I'm not in the US so I've no dog in this race only curiousity.
I can understand allowing a governor to change the text of a bill. But I cannot understand allowing them to sign those changes into law. It seems like that would mean they could creatively reverse the meaning of any bill.
It seems like a governor should be able to approve the text as written, or change it and send it back.
The original intention was to allow for what is called a "line-item veto." Let's say you had a bill (and this is not uncommon) with a lot of basically unrelated provisions. It creates programs A, B and C. This would allow the governor to approve A and C but not B, and would prevent the sort of "horse-trading" that legislators like to do ("I'll support your pet idea if you support mine").
That was the idea. But Wisconsin has twisted into something else entirely. Arguably, the idea was not a good one to begin with, anyway.
