I actually found a typo of a 100x magnitude in a Washington, D.C. law about ten years ago. Submitted it, and it was administratively adjusted. No need to even take it back for another vote. I believe is happens with much greater frequency than anyone outside the business of maintaining legal documents imagines.
[even had a typo in the first publish of this comment!]
Situation was basically a table rendered in prose format. I can’t recall the precise verbiage, but it read something like:
In 2015, the requirement shall be 0.05%. In 2016, the requirement shall be 0.7. In 2017, the requirement shall be 0.09%
Very subtle typo which, had it been treated as The Truth of The Text would have bankrupted anyone attempting to adhere to the regulation.
for obvious fixes, that’s not actual power: They could not do that if the correct answer weren’t obvious.
If I offered a new car for 10€ — obviously it should have been 10k€, so others cannot expect me to fulfil that (ask your local police).
If I had offered it for 8.5k€ and suddenly claim it should have been 10k€, it’s far from obvious that this was a mere error, so I’d likely have to stand for it.
If I offered a used car for 10€, the case becomes murky.
This is hacker news. If this was some code rather than in meatspace and you trusted a single client to modify a turning complete config file for everyone else you'd call it a massive security vulnerability. I don't understand how having humans involved changes that. Yes, they probably have good intentions but has that assumption ever worked out in human history? If it's not used today for something nefarious, it will be used tomorrow.
A legislative body is a conflict resolution mechanism, and one that is basically in the business of writing the code of law (literally). For something to be considered a typo, there must be negligible conflict over that interpretation. If not, the legislative body addresses it again or it’s handled by the judiciary. The legal register who maintains the official version of the text works at the behest of the legislative body. These things are not occurring without supervision.
[even had a typo in the first publish of this comment!]