Car­bon­WA’s Ini­tia­tive 732, a sup­pos­ed­ly “rev­enue neu­tral” pro­pos­al to levy a statewide tax on car­bon emis­sions while low­er­ing Wash­ing­ton’s sales and B&O tax­es, has nar­row­ly qual­i­fied as an ini­tia­tive to the 2016 Leg­is­la­ture fol­low­ing a ran­dom sam­ple check, says the chief spokesman for Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman.

In an ear­ly evening press release, Wyman’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor David Ammons explained why I‑732 near­ly failed its ran­dom sam­ple check despite hav­ing been sub­mit­ted with a large cush­ion of extra sig­na­tures. He wrote:

It was a close call, though, despite spon­sors turn­ing in 363,126 sig­na­tures, near­ly 120,000 more than the bare num­ber of valid vot­er sig­na­tures required (246,372).

That’s because there an unusu­al­ly high error rate was dis­cov­ered when elec­tion crews checked a 3 per­cent ran­dom sam­ple of 11,061 sig­na­tures.  The error rate was 27.59 per­cent, well above the his­toric aver­age of 18 per­cent. That was due pri­mar­i­ly to dupli­cate sig­na­tures, but also reflect­ed invalid sig­na­tures, pri­mar­i­ly those of peo­ple not found on the Wash­ing­ton vot­er rolls.

In fact, if a few more dupli­cate sig­na­tures had turned up in the ran­dom check, the Elec­tions Divi­sion would have had to check all 363,126 sig­na­tures. Ini­tia­tives can­not be reject­ed the ran­dom sam­ple method.

As it was, the sig­na­ture check projects that spon­sors brought in only a slim cush­ion of 16,568 sig­na­tures, or 262,940.

The error rate was the high­est in at least 25 years.

I can’t say we’re sur­prised. When you hire asso­ciates of Tim Eyman to run your sig­na­ture dri­ve, as Car­bon­WA did, you can expect to run into problems.

PDC data shows Car­bon­WA paid hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars to Brent John­son’s Your Choice Peti­tions, LLC to col­lect sig­na­tures for I‑732.

What many peo­ple don’t know is that Brent John­son is a prime sub­con­trac­tor for Tim Eyman’s pals Roy Ruffi­no and Eddie Agazarm, who run the trou­bled sig­na­ture gath­er­ing out­fit Cit­i­zen Solu­tions. Cit­i­zen Solu­tions has got­ten into trou­ble with Wash­ing­ton’s Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries for fail­ing to prop­er­ly com­ply with the state’s work­er pro­tec­tion laws, as we have pre­vi­ous­ly reported.

John­son’s crews helped get Tim Eyman’s I‑1366 on the bal­lot ear­li­er in 2015, and Eyman & Co. will no doubt be rely­ing on John­son again to help with the new ini­tia­tive Eyman that has planned for this year.

Pro­gres­sive cam­paigns ought to know bet­ter than to do busi­ness with shady sig­na­ture gath­er­ing out­fits that enable the likes of Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Car­bon­WA went into busi­ness with the wrong peo­ple. By hir­ing Brent John­son, they not only risked the suc­cess of their own sig­na­ture dri­ve, they helped sus­tain a busi­ness that pro­vides sup­port to Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive factory.

Though I‑732 has qual­i­fied, it faces uncer­tain prospects. Non­par­ti­san leg­isla­tive staff have cal­cu­lat­ed that the ini­tia­tive isn’t real­ly rev­enue neu­tral, a con­clu­sion Car­bon­WA’s pro­po­nents heat­ed­ly dispute.

The polling that’s been done to date has shown extreme­ly poor sup­port for I‑732 (the bal­lot title starts out with around 39%, accord­ing to one poll).

I‑732 pro­po­nents con­cede that the bal­lot title is an Achilles’ heel, but believe that the ini­tia­tive can muster enough sup­port to win nonetheless.

We think that opti­mism is mis­placed. NPI has worked for and against Wash­ing­ton State bal­lot mea­sures every year since its incep­tion, and we know a weak, flawed pro­pos­al when we see one. All oppo­nents will have to do to win is fer­til­ize the exist­ing seeds of doubt, and I‑732 will go down to defeat.

And there will be a cam­paign, because Sen­ate Repub­li­cans like Doug Erick­sen have no inten­tion of giv­ing I‑732’s pro­po­nents a vic­to­ry in the Legislature.