Whitman County Gazette - Serving Whitman County since 1877

Four Washington state counties announced they will not enforce Initiative 1639, and more may follow. I don’t understand. I was taught in high school civics class we are a federal, constitutional democracy.

I remembered the words but didn’t quite remember what they mean, so I looked them up in the dictionary. The “democracy” part means we have the right to vote. In a pure democracy, citizens vote on everything. Any time there is a question, the people gather at the meeting place and vote on the issue. We have both too many people and too many issues to do that, so our founding fathe...