Last week, after the initial 2019 election returns were published, a giddy Tim Eyman wasted no time in unleashing a torrent of fresh insults and put downs directed at his opponents. Eyman publicly jeered that elected leaders like King County Executive Dow Constantine “were going through the five stages of grief” and would eventually arrive at the fifth stage (“acceptance”) before very long.
It appears that it’s Eyman who is in the midst of a major crash, however.
Eyman’s mood has gone from euphoric and giddy on Election Night to feisty and eager for a confrontation with opponents only a couple days later to extremely petulant and whiny the week after. Eyman has complained of being “bullied” by his opposition at the Seattle City Hall confrontation he instigated. He has grumbled about being temporarily suspended from being able to post to Facebook, which he seems addicted to. And, of course, he’s mad I‑976 is being challenged in court.
“Seattle government is suing the voters because the voters disobeyed and voted for it anyway,” yelped Eyman in a statement distributed to reporters. “It’s a slap in the face to the people who clearly oppose these dishonest vehicle taxes.”
You want to talk about a slap in the face to voters, Tim?
Then let’s talk about the Initiative 976 ballot title — the words and phrases that represented I‑976 on Washingtonians’ ballots this autumn. If there were a contest for worst ballot title in state history, I‑976 would be a formidable contender.
Here’s the I‑976 ballot title, written by the Office of the Attorney General, the state agency that Tim Eyman now appears to loathe more than any other:
Initiative Measure No. 976 concerns motor vehicle taxes and fees.
This measure would repeal, reduce, or remove authority to impose certain vehicle taxes and fees; limit annual motor-vehicle-license fees to $30, except voter-approved charges; and base vehicle taxes on Kelley Blue Book value.
Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]
This ballot title, like the initiative that it purports to describe, is a blazing dumpster fire. Voters are not given any information with which they could use to make an informed decision about this issue. It is a failure in every respect.
It’s also, I believe, an illegal ballot title.
The concise description [for an initiative to the people, an initiative to the legislature, a referendum bill, or a referendum measure] must contain no more than thirty words, be a true and impartial description of the measure’s essential contents, clearly identify the proposition to be voted on, and not, to the extent reasonably possible, create prejudice either for or against the measure.
The I‑976 ballot title flunks all of these requirements. It is not a true or impartial description of the measure’s contents, it does not clearly identify what is being voted upon, and it creates prejudice in favor of the measure.
It has no value at all, not even as fodder for a public opinion survey.
If someone suggested this language to NPI use for a question in one of our research polls, we would reject it immediately. A question that invites a particular answer is not a question that will yield useful data.
A better ballot title would have been:
Initiative Measure No. 976 concerns transportation funding.
This measure would eliminate motor vehicle fees supporting state and local transportation improvements. Vehicle fees would be limited to $30, costing an estimated $4.2 billion in funding for projects and services through 2025.
Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]
I just wrote the above over the course of about five to ten minutes. That is how long it took me to come up with a first draft of a more defensible ballot title. And I am not a lawyer. Question development is, however, a skill I have a lot of practice with, because I write survey questions frequently.
I appreciate that neutral question writing is difficult. It’s really an art form.
Notice what is different about my theoretical ballot title.
It is much more straightforward and avoids the use of words like “certain” and “except”, which the AGO’s attorneys flagrantly overuse in ballot titles.
It also concisely describes the tradeoffs of the measure: cheaper car tabs mean loss of funding for projects and services without a replacement revenue source.
(The fiscal impact statement was actually not available when the I‑976 ballot title was written, but I believe Washington State law should require fiscal impact statements to be completed as part of the process of finalizing an initiative, so my theoretical ballot title incorporates the fiscal impact estimates.)
For the purposes of this particular experiment in alternative language, I kept my ballot title limited to the length currently prescribed by state law.
A longer ballot title, however, would allow more context to be offered to voters. Local propositions typically have longer titles than statewide initiatives do and are more descriptive. State law should be changed to permit state-level measure ballot titles to be longer (the concise description is currently limited to thirty words).
When voters are being asked to decide the fate of proposed laws, they need be given sufficient information to make an informed decision.
With I‑976, they weren’t. In fact, with I‑976, they were lied to.
Let’s go back to the original I‑976 ballot title.
“This measure would repeal, reduce, or remove authority to impose certain vehicle taxes and fees; limit annual motor-vehicle-license fees to $30, except voter-approved charges; and base vehicle taxes on Kelley Blue Book value,” it says.
As I explained last week, a voter reading this might justifiably conclude that the initiative they’re being asked to approve or reject limits motor vehicle license fees to thirty dollars except for “voter approved charges”, which would be exempt.
But contrary to what its title says, Initiative 976 does not exempt previously adopted “voter approved charges” from being eliminated. Seattle, for instance, has a voter approved charge that benefits Metro bus service and Sound Transit has one for light rail, commuter rail, bus rapid transit, and express bus expansion.
I‑976 would repeal those fees even though the voters authorized them.
The reference to Kelley Blue Book value in the title is also a big problem.
There is a provision in the initiative that requires Kelley Blue Book data to be used to calculate a future motor vehicle excise tax. The ballot title doesn’t bother to explain that only people in Sound Transit’s jurisdiction currently pay an MVET or that the initiative seeks to repeal that MVET entirely, which would make the provision about basing the valuation on Kelley Blue Book data irrelevant.
Eyman put the Kelley Blue Book provision into Initiative 976 because he wanted a ballot title that would support the talking points he had developed for Initiative 976 (vote for this measure and it’ll fix dishonest vehicle taxes!). Eyman succeeded in getting the Attorney General’s office to give him what he wanted and then he picked the I‑976 ballot title as the language that he wanted voters to see.
The practice of filing multiple initiatives with different provisions in order to obtain a favorable ballot title is known as ballot title shopping.
It is an abusive practice that wastes public tax dollars (oh, the irony…) but the Legislature has failed to put a stop to it, so Eyman has gone on doing it.
The AGO wrote a very different ballot title for I‑975, one of the alternatives to I‑976 that Eyman filed on the very same day as I‑976. Here’s that title:
Initiative Measure No. 975 concerns motor vehicle taxes and fees.
This measure would repeal or remove authority to impose certain vehicle taxes and fees, including charges funding mass-transit or regional transportation; limit motor-vehicle-license fees to $30, except voter-approved charges; and change vehicle-valuation laws.
Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]
This title is better than the I‑976 ballot title, although it still contains defects. The AGO generated a similar title for Initiative 976, filed on March 14th, 2018.
The lesson here is that language matters. Words mean things. If you ask a loaded question, you’ll get a loaded answer. The I‑976 ballot title invited a yes vote on Initiative 976, stacking the deck in Eyman’s favor from the very beginning. The opposition coalition, which NPI was a part of, raised millions of dollars in an attempt to overcome the bad ballot title, but the bad ballot title won out.
The terrible I‑976 ballot title is the real slap in the face to voters.
People rightly expect that when they are asked to make a decision about something, they be given the facts necessary to render an informed decision.
Fact-finding — the pursuit of truth — is essential to journalism, essential to criminal/civil justice, and essential to our democracy.
As a people, we cannot have any confidence in a decision that was made based on bad information. That is why is so important that Initiative 976 is being challenged in court. The measure must be thrown out, and the Legislature must make initiative reform a priority in 2020 so that cons like Initiative 976 can’t be run against the people of Washington State in the future.
It’s just sickening that people like Eyman are allowed to get away with duping people like this.