WAmend’s Initiative 735 certified to the 2016 Legislature, ballot, Secretary of State says

WAmend’s Ini­tia­tive 735 — which would put Wash­ing­ton State on record in sup­port of a fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to end the legal fic­tion that cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple and mon­ey is speech — has been cer­ti­fied as an ini­tia­tive to the 2016 Leg­is­la­ture, Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman’s office announced this morning.

Wyman’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor David Ammons writes:

The state Elec­tions Divi­sion com­plet­ed a ran­dom sam­ple of the 333,040 sig­na­tures sub­mit­ted by spon­sors, con­firm­ing that there were suf­fi­cient sig­na­tures. The inval­i­da­tion rate, includ­ing dupli­cates and sig­na­tures from peo­ple not found on the vot­er rolls, was 18.44 per­cent. That is about the aver­age rejec­tion rate for Wash­ing­ton bal­lot mea­sures in recent decades.

WAmend and part­ner Fix Democ­ra­cy First turned in hun­dreds of thou­sands of sig­na­tures for I‑735 a month ago after the com­ple­tion of a lengthy sig­na­ture dri­ve. At the time, the WAmend coali­tion (which includes NPI) felt con­fi­dent that enough sig­na­tures had been sub­mit­ted to ensure the ini­tia­tive would qual­i­fy, but it’s real­ly nice to have received con­fir­ma­tion from the Sec­re­tary of State that I‑735 has now passed its ran­dom sam­ple check with­out any problems.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief: after all those months of hard work, we made it!

I‑735 was qual­i­fied to the Leg­is­la­ture and the 2016 bal­lot using pri­mar­i­ly vol­un­teer sig­na­ture gath­er­ers, which is unusu­al in an era of big mon­ey in pol­i­tics. The field effort was over­seen by NPI Advi­so­ry Coun­cil mem­ber Steve Zemke, a vet­er­an of numer­ous past ini­tia­tive cam­paigns. Steve served as WAmend’s Field Director.

The Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate is not expect­ed to take up I‑735, which means it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly go to the Novem­ber 2016 bal­lot to be vot­ed on by the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State. How­ev­er, Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Noel Frame and Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Sen­a­tor Mar­a­lyn Chase have intro­duced bills in the Leg­is­la­ture that mir­ror I‑735. These are HB 2848 and SB 6505. Nei­ther has been sched­uled for a hear­ing yet. HB 2848 will like­ly get a hear­ing in Sam Hunt’s State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee with­in the next cou­ple of weeks. Hunt is one of the bil­l’s cosponsors.