Today, the Washington Senate voted to end a 96-year-old requirement that amendments to the operating budget offered on the Senate floor receive a supermajority in order to pass.
In 1915, the Senate adopted a supermajority requirement for floor amendments to the operating budget proposed by Ways & Means Committee. A two-thirds vote was requirement for amendments, but the Senate heard amendments on the floor as a committee of the whole, which appears to have meant that votes on the amendments were not recorded.
The requirement for voting as a committee of the whole was dropped in 1983, and the threshold lowered from two-thirds to sixty percent, creating the rule as it has existed for 28 years until today.