Felony charges filed against petitioner who submitted fraudulent signatures for Tim Eyman’s I‑1185 and R‑74 in 2012

A peti­tion­er who state elec­tions offi­cials dis­cov­ered had sub­mit­ted thou­sands of fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures last year for Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1185 and for Ref­er­en­dum 74 (the unsuc­cess­ful bal­lot mea­sure to over­turn mar­riage equal­i­ty) is being pros­e­cut­ed by Sno­homish Coun­ty for com­mit­ting a felony, court records show.

The Her­ald of Everett report­ed today that Julie A. Klein, fifty-four, of Marysville, was charged in late July with false­ly sign­ing peti­tions for I‑1185 and R‑74 thou­sands of times, alleged­ly with names that she found in the phone book. (That’s appar­ent­ly what she told Wash­ing­ton State Patrol detectives).

Klein has plead­ed not guilty to the charges.

If con­vict­ed, she could be sen­tenced to up to five years in prison — or fined $10,000. Alter­na­tive­ly, she could be sen­tenced to prison and fined.

The Klein case is just the lat­est instance of sig­na­ture fraud uncov­ered in Wash­ing­ton State, and fur­ther proof that, con­trary to what ini­tia­tive prof­i­teer Tim Eyman has claimed, sig­na­ture fraud does exist and it is a prob­lem that needs to be dealt with.

For years, Eyman has insist­ed to reporters and state law­mak­ers that there is no need for over­sight of the ini­tia­tive process because sig­na­ture fraud just does­n’t hap­pen in Wash­ing­ton. Two and a half years ago, in a Feb­ru­ary 28th, 2011 email to the press and to elect­ed lead­ers decry­ing Sen­ate Bill 5297, he depict­ed the state’s under­ground sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try as hav­ing a squeaky clean reputation:

We’ve writ­ten about this repeat­ed­ly this year: over the past 12 years, 12.7 mil­lion sig­na­tures have been turned in to the Sec­re­tary of State, and in all that time, there’s been 1 prob­lem with 1 SEIU offi­cial last year.

In real­i­ty, Wash­ing­ton State’s sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try has a his­to­ry of oper­at­ing out­side of the law, and Eyman and his asso­ciates know it.

At the time Eyman sent the email excerpt­ed above, there was actu­al­ly anoth­er case of doc­u­ment­ed sig­na­ture fraud — a case Eyman was well aware of.

That case con­cerned fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures that had been col­lect­ed (but not sub­mit­ted) for one of Eyman’s own ini­tia­tives — I‑985 in 2008.

Like­ly Eyman did­n’t men­tion it because it would have under­mined the nar­ra­tive he was try­ing to sell to reporters. One case of sig­na­ture fraud can be called an iso­lat­ed inci­dent, but two is twice as many as one and begins to indi­cate a trend.

And in the years since, more instances of fraud have been dis­cov­ered. Stein’s fraud was dis­cov­ered last year, and ear­ly this year, an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures were dis­cov­ered dur­ing the ran­dom sam­ple checks con­duct­ed on Tim Eyman’s I‑517 and the ini­tia­tive to require the label­ing of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods, I‑522. (NPI oppos­es I‑517 and sup­ports I‑522).

The Her­ald’s Eric Ste­vick notes:

Eight of 19 ini­tia­tives or ref­er­en­da sub­mit­ted for ver­i­fi­ca­tion between July 2008 and Jan­u­ary 2013 con­tained irreg­u­lar­i­ties that were turned over to the State Patrol.

Over that span, 19 peo­ple have been inves­ti­gat­ed for peti­tion forgery or fraud. Among those, two were con­vict­ed of felonies.

That these fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures are being dis­cov­ered is espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant con­sid­er­ing that the Sec­re­tary of State does not usu­al­ly check all of the sig­na­tures that are sub­mit­ted for any giv­en ini­tia­tive or referendum.

When a peti­tion dri­ve ends and peti­tions are turned in, elec­tions offi­cials do a count to see how many sig­na­tures there are. If the total num­ber sub­mit­ted rea­son­ably exceeds the min­i­mum required, elec­tions offi­cials per­form what’s called a ran­dom sam­ple check. If the mea­sure pass­es the ran­dom sam­ple check, it goes on the bal­lot or before the Leg­is­la­ture, as the case may be.

Not inspect­ing every sig­na­ture cer­tain­ly saves mon­ey, but it also means that sig­na­ture fraud may go unde­tect­ed, as we’ve point­ed out in response to Eyman’s false and mis­lead­ing state­ments. (In oth­er states, includ­ing Ore­gon, there have been many doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of sig­na­ture fraud, and the notion that it can’t hap­pen here because we’re on the north­ern side of the Colum­bia is ridiculous).

Even if Eyman had amend­ed his email to say “two known prob­lems” it would still have been mis­lead­ing. Sig­na­ture check­ers always find dupli­cate and invalid sig­na­tures when they check sig­na­tures on peti­tions, because they’re so com­mon. They don’t always find fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures because fraud is less com­mon. But again, that does­n’t mean it does­n’t happen.

Innocu­ous invalid sig­na­tures are unques­tion­ably prob­lem­at­ic — they just don’t rise to the lev­el of fraud, which mer­its a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. If sub­mit­ted peti­tions did­n’t con­tain sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of prob­lem­at­ic sig­na­tures, there’d be no need for spon­sors to sub­mit a cush­ion con­sist­ing of thou­sands of extra, valid signatures.

The fact that elec­tions offi­cials keep uncov­er­ing fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures on peti­tions means that sig­na­ture gath­er­ing com­pa­nies like Cit­i­zen Solu­tions (Eddie Agazarm and Roy Ruffi­no’s out­fit) are not con­sis­tent­ly catch­ing the bad actors on their own — which is some­thing they’ve claimed they’re capa­ble of doing.

That’s just one rea­son why our state’s under­ground sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try needs to be sub­ject­ed to stronger over­sight and enforcement.

There are oth­er reasons.

Many paid peti­tion­ers come in from out of state to work on cam­paigns in Wash­ing­ton, and most do not both­er to reg­is­ter with the Depart­ment of Rev­enue or the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries. The peti­tion­ing firms that bring them in do not both­er to com­ply with Wash­ing­ton’s work­er pro­tec­tion laws.

That puts the peti­tion­ers them­selves at risk, and it also makes it dif­fi­cult for author­i­ties to track down law­break­ers, as a WSP detec­tive told The Herald:

Bob Calkins, a spokesman for the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol, said some inves­ti­ga­tions have run into dead-ends.

“Not only were the sig­na­tures fraud­u­lent, but the iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion about the sig­na­ture gath­er­er was fraud­u­lent and we were nev­er able to run that down to an indi­vid­ual per­son,” he said. “So those oth­er cas­es we were unable to take for­ward for prosecution.”

Sev­er­al years ago, we urged the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries to start look­ing at these com­pa­nies. After we did, L&I end­ed up con­duct­ing an audit of Eyman’s asso­ciates at Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, and fined them more than $8,000 for labor law vio­la­tions. Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the audit, Eyman’s asso­ciates changed Cit­i­zen Solu­tions’ address and rein­car­nat­ed the firm as a new enti­ty — a lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny. Infor­ma­tion we’ve received about their activ­i­ties leads us to con­clude they are still fla­grant­ly oper­at­ing out­side of the law.

They know they are and they don’t care.

For too long, firms like Cit­i­zen Solu­tions have been exploit­ing not only vot­ers, but the work­ers they hire to car­ry peti­tions on behalf of pow­er­ful inter­ests, includ­ing Tim Eyman and his wealthy bene­fac­tors. This exploita­tion needs to end.

It is time for us to clean up Wash­ing­ton’s sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try so we can safe­guard the spir­it and the integri­ty of our state’s ini­tia­tive process. In the weeks and months to come, we’ll be work­ing with oth­er con­cerned Wash­ing­to­ni­ans and state law­mak­ers to shine a spot­light on the indus­try and strength­en over­sight of it.