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Originally Posted by Gaerek
It seems that something would have been better than the nothing we have now though.
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Not so.
Having been involved in legislative affairs as a committee member for a professional society for many years, I have seen first-hand what more experienced members of the committee told me: Legislators absolutely don't like being told they goofed, and they HATE having to go back and fix a bad/flawed law. There's no positive press to be had from "We admit that we messed up badly when we enacted ___ last year, so this year we're going to fix it."
More often, if a bad law gets enacted to remain bad law for a very long time, until some specific event comes up that shows just HOW bad it is and makes it clear that it MUST be fixed. That probably won't happen until at least most of those who were originally involved in enacting it have left office.
A few years ago I was actively involved in achieving the repeal of an incredibly flawed law in my state that had been on the books for more than 80 years. It was a criminal offense law. In over 80 years, there had no been ONE arrest and prosecution under this law. When a police department finally did arrest someone and bring them to trial, the defense won an acquittal on a directed motion because the prosecution had not understood what thee law even said. The prosecution introduced exactly zero evidence that the defendant had violated either of the two halves of the law. The judge agreed.
And, ultimately, the legislature agreed. Rather than try to "fix" a law that obviously wasn't needed, they wisely (for once) just repealed it. And it "only" took eighty years.