Here in Wash­ing­ton State, 2019 is sup­posed to be a local elec­tion year — a cycle when we focus on fill­ing impor­tant offices close to home at the local lev­el, like city coun­cil, port com­mis­sion, school board, and even fire dis­trict or water district.

But it’s not going to feel much like a local elec­tion year when the time comes to open up that bal­lot and fill in all the ovals. That’s because — at least in King Coun­ty, the state’s most pop­u­lous sub­di­vi­sion — there won’t be a sin­gle local posi­tion on the front of the bal­lot. That’s right, not even one. 

Why is there no room for local races on the front of the bal­lot in a local elec­tion year!? Because this Novem­ber, there are fif­teen statewide bal­lot mea­sures, twelve of which are not real­ly bal­lot mea­sures at all, but rather push polls man­dat­ed by an old Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive that has­n’t been ful­ly struck down yet.

In addi­tion to the unprece­dent­ed twelve push polls, there’s one Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive (I‑976) plus a ref­er­en­dum to rein­state a Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive (R‑88).

This is why we call this year’s bal­lot “the Eymal­lot” — because it might as well have been designed by Tim Eyman him­self. Eyman has man­aged to do some­thing unprece­dent­ed: turn the bal­lot itself into a mech­a­nism for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pure pro­pa­gan­da. That’s what those push polls are: anti-tax propaganda.

The only item on the front of the bal­lot that is NOT Eyman relat­ed is Sen­ate Joint Res­o­lu­tion 8200, a bipar­ti­san, uncon­tro­ver­sial house­keep­ing amend­ment to the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion that would allow the state’s emer­gency pow­ers to be invoked in the event of a “cat­a­stroph­ic inci­dent” (like a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake), as opposed to the more nar­row sce­nario of an “ene­my attack”.

Now, it’s one thing for you to read all of this. It’s anoth­er thing entire­ly for you to actu­al­ly see this year’s bal­lot. Yes­ter­day, King Coun­ty Elec­tions com­plet­ed work on the design of the bal­lot, and they were kind enough to send over a sam­ple of the design to us. Now I can show you what I’m talk­ing about.

Behold, this year’s gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot… the Eymallot!

This is “The Eymal­lot”… a gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot that’s packed to the brim with Tim Eyman push polls.

The staff at Elec­tions told us that try­ing to make every­thing fit on a sin­gle piece of paper was extreme­ly chal­leng­ing and they had to con­sid­er going to two pages. Ulti­mate­ly, every­thing was made to fit on just one page. The three bind­ing statewide bal­lot mea­sures, plus the Eyman push polls, take up the entire front of the bal­lot. As men­tioned, there’s not a sin­gle local race on there.

Every local race has been rel­e­gat­ed to the back of the ballot.

It’s just appalling.

Were it not for the twelve Eyman push polls, most of what is on the back of the bal­lot could fit on the front along with the three real statewide bal­lot measures.

It is worth men­tion­ing that the Leg­is­la­ture had a chance to put the kibosh on all of these push polls ear­li­er this year, thus avert­ing this stupidity.

Led by Andy Bil­lig, Man­ka Dhin­gra, Rebec­ca Sal­dana, and bill spon­sor Pat­ty Kud­er­er, the Sen­ate vot­ed to abol­ish them, but the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives failed to act because ex-Speak­er Frank Chopp would­n’t bring the bill to the floor.

How­ev­er, all is not lost. The bill remains alive and it could pass next ses­sion… if Wash­ing­to­ni­ans rise up and insist that their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives act to remove pro­pa­gan­da from the bal­lot. The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will have a new Speak­er, Lau­rie Jink­ins, who will hope­ful­ly per­mit this bill to come to the floor for a vote so that it can be sent to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s desk.

If you agree that 2019 should be the last year that we ever have to suf­fer through hav­ing our bal­lot turned into an Eymal­lot, then please take action now. Fol­low this link to send a mes­sage to leg­isla­tive lead­ers. Let them know that you want Sen­ate Bill 5224 passed by both hous­es in the 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. Then, share the call to action with your friends. Togeth­er, we can abol­ish Tim Eyman’s push polls.