NO on I‑1125 vote reaches 53% statewide

A week ago, I men­tioned here on The Advo­cate that I was asked at the NO on I‑1125 elec­tion night par­ty what I thought final spread on I‑1125 would be, and that my guess was that the no vote would even­tu­al­ly sur­pass 53%.

Today, with just under two weeks to go until the 2011 elec­tion is cer­ti­fied, that’s just what hap­pened. NO on I‑1125 man­aged to reach 53% of the vote in only a week thanks to the two fac­tors I cit­ed: the strong no vote in King Coun­ty and the weak yes vote in many east­ern Wash­ing­ton counties.

On elec­tion night, the vote against I‑1125 in King Coun­ty stood at an impres­sive 60.37%. Over the course of a week, it has climbed three whole per­cent­age points, to 63.36%. And it’s still get­ting stronger!

At the same time, the vote for I‑1125 has been weak­en­ing. Adams and Spokane coun­ties joined the no col­umn a week ago, Pierce has con­tin­u­ous­ly been inch­ing clos­er to the point where its vot­ers will be even­ly split, and key swing coun­ties like What­com and Sno­homish have become more solid­ly NO.

In most east­ern Wash­ing­ton coun­ties (exclud­ing the three that are against I‑1125), the vote in favor is not par­tic­u­lar­ly lop­sided, as has been the case with past Eyman ini­tia­tives. For instance, in Fer­ry and Stevens coun­ties, which are among the most con­ser­v­a­tive places in Wash­ing­ton, I‑1125 is only receiv­ing 54% of the vote.

I‑1125’s defeat leaves Eyman zero for four in try­ing to rewrite state trans­porta­tion pol­i­cy. In 2000, he tried to con­vince vot­ers that it would be a good idea to forcibly require nine­ty per­cent of our trans­porta­tion bud­get to go to roads. The peo­ple said no. Eyman did­n’t lis­ten; in 2002, he attempt­ed to run a sim­i­lar ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture but the effort ran out of gas (pun intend­ed) and Eyman did not sub­mit the nec­es­sary sig­na­tures to get it before the House and Senate.

In 2008, Eyman pro­posed Ini­tia­tive 985, which, like I‑1125, con­tained tolling restric­tions. It also would have opened high occu­pan­cy vehi­cles to solo dri­vers dur­ing most hours of the day. Vot­ers resound­ing­ly reject­ed it.

Now I‑1125 has fit­ting­ly joined that pile of failures.

Of course, that has­n’t stopped Eyman from try­ing to spin it as a suc­cess. In emails to his fol­low­ers, he’s been claim­ing that by forc­ing a vote on I‑1125, he’s made tolls “more radioac­tive”. In real­i­ty, he accom­plished just the opposite.

If any­thing, I‑1125 has made tolling a less con­tentious pol­i­cy direc­tion in Wash­ing­ton State… because it failed. In defeat­ing I‑1125, the vot­ers have put their stamp of approval on the Leg­is­la­ture’s plans to improve our highways.

Those plans do not, as we point­ed out dur­ing the cam­paign, call for a sud­den and imme­di­ate impo­si­tion of tolls every­where, on every state route or interstate.

Rather, the shift to tolls as a major rev­enue source for projects will hap­pen grad­u­al­ly, on a facil­i­ty by facil­i­ty basis.

As we’ve repeat­ed­ly not­ed, only two facil­i­ties in Wash­ing­ton State are cur­rent­ly tolled: SR 16, which cross­es the Taco­ma Nar­rows and SR 167, home to the exper­i­men­tal HOT lanes project. Tolls have been autho­rized on a third facil­i­ty, the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge, but that’s it.

There’s been talk of tolling oth­er facil­i­ties as well, but talk is not the same as autho­riza­tion. Talk does­n’t even trans­late to intent… it just means discussion.

And when the time does come for action, it will hap­pen with­in the leg­isla­tive process. That’s because sate law pro­hibits WSDOT or the Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion from impos­ing tolls where there are none now. Only the Leg­is­la­ture can autho­rize an expan­sion of tolling. So that list of tolled facil­i­ties isn’t going to get any longer until the Leg­is­la­ture votes to make it longer.