Voting on Laws

In the state where I live currently (Washington) we have a process whereby citizens can directly offer up legislation to be voted on by the population at large. A number of signatures are required to get said measures on the ballot, and my limited understanding of the process seems to indicate that it isn't just a walk in the park - so we only see a handful of such 'initiatives' up for voting each election. Some in the past, and even this season, are ones I supported - requiring 2/3rd majorities of our legislature in order to pass new taxes, for example. However, there are a few which I just voted on today which were so convoluted that I'm not sure what will happen if they are passed into law.

Of these, a couple in particular were complicated enough that there were parts I agreed with and others which I very much did not. For example, two - yes, two similar initiatives are up at the same time - were focused on reforming the way our state handles 'hard liquor'. I like that they both wanted to do away with having the State Liquor Board directly warehouse and sell such drinks, which seems like something the government has no business being involved in. However, they then both also would have gotten rid of various laws about the sales of liquor which seemed pretty complex. Some, like those affecting where sales could happen, didn't really bother me - but then others removed taxes, and some seemed to open up changes which would allow bigger beer companies to come in and push out smaller, local breweries.

I'm not into drinking, so that doesn't hit me directly like some of my friends and co-workers, but I do like small and local companies over national conglomerates in a lot of other areas. This dichotomy makes me wish there were actually several smaller initiatives for each of these topics, so I could split my votes up based on how I think / feel. The more I think about it, I bet this problem extends far beyond just the initiative process: most laws these days are long and complex affairs, and likely even the best are saddled with clauses and add-ons which bring unwanted things. Kind of the opposite of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'; maybe one could say 'letting in the fleas with the dog'. I suppose those in power probably don't want changes made, but I would *love* to be able to restrict each law to a small amount of text or some other way of limiting scope to specific issues, rather than having to enact huge bundles of rules just to get one good law in place.