Should “advisory votes” be abolished? Voters say yes to repealing Tim Eyman’s push polls

Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing are the pre­pared remarks of NPI Vice Pres­i­dent-Sec­re­tary Diane Jones in sup­port of Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er’s SB 6610, which would per­ma­nent­ly abol­ish Tim Eyman’s advi­so­ry votes push polls and cre­ate a task force to exam­ine ways of gath­er­ing pub­lic input on the Leg­is­la­ture’s fis­cal deci­sions. The bill was heard on Feb­ru­ary 5th, 2020 by the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate’s State Gov­ern­ment Committee. 

Chair Hunt, Rank­ing Mem­ber Zeiger, and Mem­bers of the Committee:

Good morn­ing. For the record, my name is Diane Jones. I serve as the Vice Pres­i­dent-Sec­re­tary of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, a non­prof­it 501(c)(4) strat­e­gy cen­ter based in Red­mond that works to raise every­one’s qual­i­ty of life through insight­ful research and imag­i­na­tive advocacy.

I’m pleased to be here today in strong sup­port of Sen­ate Bill 6610. Adop­tion of this leg­is­la­tion will save mil­lions of tax dol­lars over the next few years by rid­ding our bal­lots of “advi­so­ry votes”, which are real­ly push polls that exist for the pur­pose of influ­enc­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ views on mat­ters of pub­lic finance.

Our bal­lots are not an appro­pri­ate place for pro­pa­gan­da or adver­tis­ing. The bal­lot is the means through which we as a peo­ple make our deci­sions about who should rep­re­sent us, and what laws we should have.

Fake bal­lot mea­sures like the Ini­tia­tive 960-man­dat­ed push polls that have appeared along­side legit­i­mate mea­sures since 2012 defile the bal­lot and con­fuse vot­ers, mak­ing vot­ing more difficult.

Last year, NPI asked Wash­ing­to­ni­ans what they thought of these push polls in two dif­fer­ent statewide pub­lic opin­ion research sur­veys tak­en five months apart.

In both sur­veys, our poll­ster (Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling) found a sev­en­teen point mar­gin in favor of their repeal. I’m pleased this morn­ing to be able to share our find­ings with you as they make their pub­lic debut.

Because we are always gen­uine­ly curi­ous about what our state’s vot­ing pub­lic actu­al­ly thinks about an issue, we had to come up with a ques­tion that would be as neu­tral­ly word­ed as pos­si­ble, and not fol­low the bad exam­ple set by Eyman’s push polls, which by design can only yield garbage data.

That proved to be challenging.

How do you objec­tive­ly describe what are pieces of propaganda?

We even­tu­al­ly came up with an ele­gant solu­tion, which was to pit Tim Eyman’s word­ing and argu­ments in favor of the push polls against our own. That gave us a neu­tral­ly word­ed ques­tion capa­ble of elic­it­ing cred­i­ble and usable data.

This was our ques­tion wording:

QUESTION: The Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture is con­sid­er­ing leg­is­la­tion that would abol­ish the non-bind­ing statewide advi­so­ry votes that are trig­gered when­ev­er a bill is passed that increas­es state rev­enue. Pro­po­nents of advi­so­ry votes say they allow vot­ers to vote on tax increas­es and trans­form the voter’s pam­phlet into a tax increase report card, enabling vot­ers to find out what Olympia is doing to them. Oppo­nents say that advi­so­ry votes are actu­al­ly cost­ly push polls designed to con­fuse the pub­lic, which ought to be elim­i­nat­ed to save valu­able tax dol­lars and pre­vent legit­i­mate mea­sures and can­di­date elec­tions from being pushed to the back of the bal­lot. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose abol­ish­ing non-bind­ing advi­so­ry votes?

And here are the respons­es we received:

May of 2019 Sup­port: 47%  Strong­ly: 19% Some­what: 28% Oppose: 30% Some­what: 16% Strong­ly: 14% Not Sure: 23%

Octo­ber of 2019 Sup­port: 43%  Strong­ly: 21% Some­what: 22% Oppose: 26% Some­what: 14% Strong­ly: 12% Not Sure: 31%

Both sur­veys posed the exact same ques­tion, with no vari­a­tions in wording.

In our first sur­vey, con­duct­ed in May of 2019 with eight hun­dred and eighty-six like­ly vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing, 47% of respon­dents expressed sup­port for abol­ish­ing “advi­so­ry votes”, while 30% expressed oppo­si­tion. 23% said they were not sure.

In our sec­ond sur­vey, con­duct­ed in Octo­ber of 2019 with nine hun­dred like­ly vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing, 43% of respon­dents expressed sup­port for abol­ish­ing advi­so­ry votes, while 26% expressed oppo­si­tion. 31% said they were not sure.

In both sur­veys, the gap favor­ing repeal was exact­ly the same: sev­en­teen points.

The major dif­fer­ence between the two sur­veys was the num­ber who said they were not sure. The high num­ber of “not sure” respons­es we saw (23% in May of 2019, 31% in Octo­ber of 2019) is under­stand­able, con­sid­er­ing that there is a lot of con­fu­sion out there about what “advi­so­ry votes” are.

Both sur­veys were con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling and have a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence inter­val. And both sur­veys used a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with some respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ing by land­line and cell­phone only vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing via online pan­el or text message.

Most vot­ers who have an opin­ion favor repeal… as do we. Push polls are, by design, intend­ed to influ­ence how peo­ple think instead of tak­ing a snap­shot of pub­lic opin­ion. That is why “advi­so­ry votes” must be repealed. They can­not be fixed. But hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about we ascer­tain data we can use about deci­sions that are made here in our state­house would be worthwhile.

Last year, this com­mit­tee gave Sen­ate Bill 5224, a sim­i­lar bill, a bipar­ti­san, unan­i­mous do-pass rec­om­men­da­tion — and then fol­lowed that up a few days lat­er by pro­vid­ing sev­en votes for the bill on the floor of the Senate.

That was one of our favorite moments of the 2019 ses­sion. It showed that Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in this cham­ber could come togeth­er to pro­tect the sanc­ti­ty of our bal­lot and save tax dol­lars. We hope you’ll go for two for two this year and give Sen­ate Bill 6610 a ring­ing “do pass” recommendation.

Thank you.