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You Must Draft the Language 2010/01/25 (06)
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Jun 5, 2025
Jon Roland explains how one has to draft the language of reforms one wants. With Lela Pittenger. Austin Constitution Meetup Jan. 25, 2010.
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to it in other words you actually have
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to draft the standards
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now I did this kind of thing in 2002
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and this came out before then it was the
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approval of textbooks
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and when I did then
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is I took a computer a laptop and a
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scanner into the mobile home where they
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had all the textbooks
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I was supposed to do that but I did
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I scanned the boats
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and then I went in and edited them
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line by line
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I found the uh the passages
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that were
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improper in my view incorrect
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I took the wrong emphasis that left out
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things
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and I wrote
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replacement passages they were similar
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lengths so they could be dropped right
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in the textbook without having to
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reformat many pages
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any of my testimony I said okay here's
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my report replace this line with that
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line this line with that line this line
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with that line line by line by line
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there are several textbooks
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that is what made the difference
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uh most almost all the testimony to add
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this or take out that
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uh in general terms was useless
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uh
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members of the State Board of Education
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don't know how to respond to that kind
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of testimony
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you have to actually write stuff
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I
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um elsewhere um
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this website
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you will find a lecturer which is
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I've given in different forms before
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uh
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what doesn't work
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what doesn't work is to demand reforms
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without providing the language of the
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reforms
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I like to cite as a general example
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if you take a case to court
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you might win the judgment
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but if you don't draft the order
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if you leave it to the judge or maybe
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the judge will even ask opposing counsel
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to draft the order
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you won't probably you probably won't
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get what you want
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you may have won the case of loose but
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actually lose it because you didn't
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draft the order
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and that's true throughout
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politics and law
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power goes to those who do the work
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and doing the work means writing the
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actual language
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if you want a Bill in Congress or the
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legislature to do what you want you have
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to draft it
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you can't just write a letter to your
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Congressman or legislator say do
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something about this
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if you if all you do is ask some
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decision maker to do something for you
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what he's going to wind up doing is
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doing something to you
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you have to actually draft the language
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when I was a volunteer on Capitol Hill
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from about 1970s into the 72.
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I didn't come with money
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or control of a lot of votes
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but I found that they needed staff work
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I also found that a lot of the staff
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work that was being done
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four members of Congress was being done
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by volunteer lobbyists like myself
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of course some of them were paid
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lobbyists
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uh
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the way you got access and influence was
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to do staff work for them
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one of the biggest kinds of Staff work
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that I was asked to do
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was to review legislation
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when members of Congress introduced
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twenty thousand bills
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a year there's no way they can read them
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all
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there's no way their paid staffers can
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read them all
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there's no
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way that they can have time to talk to
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other members or their staffers about
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what what's in those like those bills
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most of whom are not going to be really
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objective
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so it was I made myself very very useful
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by reviewing legislation
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I go through the bill bill by Bill by
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Bill
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and point out the things that would be
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reasons for the by the member that I was
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volunteering for should either vote for
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it or vote against it
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or perhaps things that he would might
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want to change
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so I've started ah I drafted a lot of
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amendments
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and it wasn't very long before I was
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drafting entire bills
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so I learned through this process how to
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draft legislation for the U.S Congress
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later on I applied similar skills to
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your rafting legislation for uh to say
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legislature
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that you can find an example of that on
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constitution.org
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it's not that difficult
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what it mostly involves
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because
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legislation is now mostly codified
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is you have to go through and find all
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of the provisions
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uh previous acts would be affected by
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the legislation you're proposing
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and
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identify them and pointing out how they
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would be changed
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so if you were let's say you have a bill
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that has the effect of repealing you
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know 45 Provisions scattered throughout
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the code you have to identify all those
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provisions
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and say they will repeal this provision
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repeal that line repeal these words and
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so forth you know a code section by code
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section by code section
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so what you're really doing is you're
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editing the code
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but your bill has to
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to do to do that you know the title and
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section and provision by provision
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it's a research project
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now the legislation you'll find on my
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website I didn't have to do that because
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I wasn't stopping on any previous
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legislation
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it was completely new
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it was actually as it turns I was it was
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a a new way of drawing congressional
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districts
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there's nothing in the code already in
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the do that so I could just tack it on
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give it a new a new section number and
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it was all French on you
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but in most cases you won't be able to
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do that
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now another thing about legislation you
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have to know how to learn how to do
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is how to anticipate all the ways it
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could be misunderstood
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because the important thing about laws
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and legislation is that if they can be
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misunderstood they will be
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and probably in the worst possible way
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so you have to think like either your
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opponents or the screw-ups that are
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going to have to apply this legislation
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and say okay
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if you turn this over to a bunch of
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bureaucrats how can they screw it up
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or if you uh left it to opposing lawyers
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to litigate it how could they twist it
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this is anticipating all the ways that
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could be misinterpreted is a very very
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Advanced art
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very few lawyers know how to do this
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very few Congressional staffers know how
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to do it
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certainly very few members of Congress
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know how to do it as you can see by the
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the work product
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so uh
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all I can say is it's a skill that can
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be learned it's not learned very by very
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many people
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and it needs to be learned by more
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people
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but anyway it's a skill I've tried to
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learn and to have to apply for uh in a
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variety of ways
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this legislation is an example other
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legislation I've drafted
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I drafted in the Constitutional
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Amendments I've started work on a whole
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new constitution for Texas
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I've been busy
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