With the autumn equinox now well in the rearview mir­ror, the time is rapid­ly draw­ing near for coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials across Wash­ing­ton State to fin­ish mail­ing out bal­lots for the Novem­ber 2021 gen­er­al election.

Bal­lots for mil­i­tary and over­seas vot­ers were mailed last month; the rest of the elec­torate should receive theirs around mid­way through the month.

Although there are no statewide mea­sures (ini­tia­tives, ref­er­en­da, or con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments) on this year’s bal­lot, vot­ers will see three anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da pieces right at the top, pre­sent­ed duplic­i­tous­ly as “advi­so­ry votes.”

“Advi­so­ry votes” are a mid-2000s cre­ation of pro­pa­gan­dist Tim Eyman, a Trum­p­like local polit­i­cal fig­ure who has spent much of his life try­ing to wreck gov­ern­ment in Wash­ing­ton State because he is rabid­ly opposed to the Amer­i­can ide­al of peo­ple pool­ing their resources to get things done.

Eyman has a gift for manip­u­lat­ing peo­ple, and has used that gift to ped­dle ini­tia­tives (pro­posed statewide laws that go on the bal­lot for peo­ple to vote on) that defund essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices of all kinds, from trains and bus­es to schools, parks, fer­ries, hos­pi­tals, libraries, pools, and fire departments.

Eyman has also pro­posed var­i­ous schemes to keep Wash­ing­ton State’s unfair, upside down tax code per­ma­nent­ly rigged in favor of the wealthy, most of which have been inval­i­dat­ed by Wash­ing­ton’s courts as unconstitutional.

“Advi­so­ry votes” are a left­over rem­nant of one of those anti-tax schemes that have yet to be struck down in court or repealed by the Leg­is­la­ture. They are pro­pa­gan­da pieces that are auto­mat­i­cal­ly trig­gered when­ev­er the Leg­is­la­ture takes any action that increas­es state rev­enue, which hap­pens every year when bud­gets are writ­ten and approved for imple­men­ta­tion by the exec­u­tive branch.

Eyman cre­at­ed “advi­so­ry votes” because he want­ed to use the bal­lot itself for anti-tax mar­ket­ing pur­pos­es. Rather than pay­ing for ads at elec­tion time like oth­er enti­ties in pol­i­tics, Eyman want­ed to cre­ate a sys­tem that would reg­u­lar­ly enable his mes­sag­ing to be pre­sent­ed to vot­ers at no cost to him or his associates.

Effec­tive­ly, this means that Eyman is guar­an­teed valu­able bal­lot “real estate” every sin­gle year. And the cost is borne by tax­pay­ers. Pret­ty ironic.

The sec­tion of King Coun­ty’s Eng­lish lan­guage ver­sion of the 2021 gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot con­tain­ing Tim Eyman’s push polls. They appear at the top of the bal­lot, before the real bal­lot mea­sures and can­di­date elec­tions. (Graph­ic from a sam­ple bal­lot fur­nished by King Coun­ty Elections)

Each “advi­so­ry vote” pre­tends to ask Wash­ing­to­ni­ans whether they approve of a par­tic­u­lar bill that the Leg­is­la­ture already passed that rais­es state rev­enue in some way.

Vot­ers are then asked whether they want to “repeal” or “main­tain” the bill, when in fact, their “votes” will have no effect and won’t change state law.

NPI has been work­ing for years to get rid of “advi­so­ry votes,” because anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da does not belong on our ballots.

Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er (who rep­re­sents NPI’s home leg­isla­tive dis­trict in the Sen­ate, the 48th) has been work­ing with us on this effort for sev­er­al years.

Sen­a­tor Kud­er­er has spon­sored a well-craft­ed bill, SB 5182, that would replace “advi­so­ry votes” with truth­ful and use­ful infor­ma­tion about the Leg­is­la­ture’s fis­cal deci­sions in the voter’s pam­phlet, which is an appro­pri­ate place for such information.

A pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion of this bill received bipar­ti­san sup­port in the Sen­ate in 2019 in both its com­mit­tee of ori­gin and lat­er on the floor.

SB 5182 is cur­rent­ly pend­ing in the Sen­ate (it received a vote of con­fi­dence in the State Sen­ate’s State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee) and is our top pri­or­i­ty for next session.

Because we are in between ses­sions that are part of the same leg­isla­tive bien­ni­um, the bill remains alive, and we con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on it as our top priority.

If SB 5182 gets a suc­cess­ful floor vote in the Sen­ate, it could be con­sid­ered by the House.

If the House approved it, it could then go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to be signed into law, and then “advi­so­ry votes” would be kaput start­ing in 2022. This would be the last year of them.

In the mean­time, vot­ers will see three “advi­so­ry votes” on their bal­lots this year, num­bered #36, #37, and #38. Each “advi­so­ry vote” was trig­gered by a bill that raised rev­enue, with one of those bills being the state’s new cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy. The three bills sub­ject­ed to pro­pa­gan­da this year are:

• Engrossed Sec­ond Sub­sti­tute House Bill 1477 (Imple­ment­ing the nation­al 988 sys­tem to enhance and expand behav­ioral health cri­sis response and sui­cide pre­ven­tion services.)
• Engrossed Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill 5096 (Con­cern­ing an excise tax on gains from the sale or exchange of cer­tain cap­i­tal assets.)
• Sec­ond Sub­sti­tute Sen­ate Bill 5315 (Con­cern­ing cap­tive insurance.)

As in past years, the pres­ence of these “advi­so­ry votes” will cause con­fu­sion and hin­der many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from effi­cient­ly fill­ing out their bal­lots. That’s because many peo­ple nat­u­ral­ly respond to some­thing that con­fus­es them by try­ing to obtain more infor­ma­tion, whether by con­sult­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber, call­ing elect­ed offi­cials, search­ing the Inter­net, or just turn­ing it over in their heads.

Oth­er Wash­ing­to­ni­ans may draw erro­neous con­clu­sions about what the three bills do based on the pur­pose­ful­ly mis­lead­ing lan­guage of the “advi­so­ry votes,” which Eyman designed to look and sound offi­cial, but which are, again, pure­ly pro­pa­gan­da pieces that he designed to serve his own ide­o­log­i­cal agenda.

Every “advi­so­ry vote” is for­mu­lat­ed using prej­u­di­cial lan­guage that encour­ages a “Repealed” vote. “Repealed” is even offered as the first option for vot­ers to fill out rather than the sec­ond option (typ­i­cal­ly, on a bal­lot, “No” or “Reject­ed” is shown as the sec­ond option, and “Yes” or “Approved” is shown first).

Vot­ers are also shown a ten year fis­cal impact esti­mate rather than a one or two year one, which results in a larg­er, more impres­sive sound­ing num­ber that Eyman can cite in his anti-tax mis­sives. (Any rev­enue tal­ly sounds more impres­sive when you take it out over ten years… but bud­get­ing isn’t done in ten-year increments.)

Eyman has defend­ed his pub­licly sub­si­dized anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da gen­er­a­tion scheme as good for democ­ra­cy because it sup­pos­ed­ly allows vot­ers to “weigh in” on tax increas­es. This fic­tion has been picked up by reporters and edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers alike. For exam­ple, last week, in an arti­cle for the Spokesman-Review, Lau­rel Demkovich incor­rect­ly char­ac­ter­ized “advi­so­ry votes” this way:

Any­time the Leg­is­la­ture pass­es a tax increase, it’s placed on the bal­lot as an advi­so­ry vote. The votes don’t change the law, but they allow the pub­lic to voice their opin­ion on tax­es passed in the Legislature.

Mean­while, The Seat­tle Times ran an unsigned edi­to­r­i­al on Sep­tem­ber 26th urg­ing its read­ers to “send a mes­sage” to the Leg­is­la­ture that the cap­i­tal gains tax is bad by vot­ing “Repealed” on one of the “advi­so­ry votes”.

Advi­so­ry votes don’t repeal the law, but they do reveal pub­lic opin­ion about rev­enue-increas­ing legislation.

They are an arti­fact of a vot­er ini­tia­tive requir­ing any leg­isla­tive tax or fee increas­es to appear on the bal­lot. The least state law­mak­ers deserve for their pre­ma­ture maneu­ver is a col­lec­tive thumbs down from the peo­ple they’re sup­posed to represent.

Like Eyman, The Seat­tle Times and Demkovich are wrong. “Advi­so­ry votes” do not allow peo­ple to “voice” or “reveal” their opin­ions about recent actions tak­en by the Leg­is­la­ture that increase rev­enue (which may or may not be tax increases).

That’s because the ques­tions being asked of vot­ers are not neu­tral­ly worded.

If you ask a ques­tion that sug­gests its own answer, whether in a poll, or a ques­tion­naire, or on an offi­cial bal­lot, then you sim­ply can­not find out what peo­ple real­ly think. It’s just not pos­si­ble. The ensu­ing “data” will be worthless.

“Advi­so­ry votes” vio­late every sin­gle rule for writ­ing neu­tral ques­tions, and that is by design. The prej­u­di­cial lan­guage is a fea­ture, not a bug. These things were not cre­at­ed to mea­sure pub­lic opin­ion; they were cre­at­ed to influ­ence it.

In this way, they are like push polls… a mar­ket­ing tech­nique reg­u­lar­ly employed by dis­rep­utable cam­paigns and inter­est groups.

To put it anoth­er way: Because “advi­so­ry votes” are them­selves anti-tax mes­sages, they can­not be used as a vehi­cle to “send a mes­sage” to legislators.

Law­mak­ers, in turn, are oblig­at­ed as respon­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple to ignore/discard bad data such as that which “advi­so­ry votes” gen­er­ate, and in the case of “advi­so­ry votes,” they have a his­to­ry of con­sis­tent­ly doing so.

Dis­con­cert­ing­ly, even the state’s own elec­tion mate­ri­als sup­port the false impres­sion that “advi­so­ry votes” were writ­ten by state offi­cials.

Demkovich’s arti­cle char­ac­ter­izes the online voter’s guide as hav­ing “descrip­tions writ­ten by the attor­ney general’s office,” prob­a­bly because the voter’s pam­phlet itself state­ment false­ly says: “Writ­ten by the Office of the Attor­ney General.”

How­ev­er, this is not the case: the descrip­tions are actu­al­ly set forth in statute with only a few blanks to be filled in by a state attorney.

In oth­er words, the “advi­so­ry votes” have Eyman’s author­ship, not the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s. You can see this your­self by look­ing at RCW 29A.72.283. The lan­guage is explic­it­ly hard­cod­ed in there, with blanks for the inser­tion of num­bers and an extreme­ly short descrip­tion of the bill to be sub­ject­ed to anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da. Eyman wrote the statute and is thus the prin­ci­pal author of every sin­gle “advi­so­ry vote” that vot­ers have ever seen going back ten years.

RCW 29A.72.283

Advi­so­ry vote on tax leg­is­la­tion — Short description.

With­in five days of receipt of a mea­sure for an advi­so­ry vote of the peo­ple from the sec­re­tary of state under RCW 29A.72.040 the attor­ney gen­er­al shall for­mu­late a short descrip­tion not exceed­ing thir­ty-three words and not sub­ject to appeal, of each tax increase and shall trans­mit a cer­ti­fied copy of such short descrip­tion meet­ing the require­ments of this sec­tion to the sec­re­tary of state. The descrip­tion must be for­mu­lat­ed and dis­played on the bal­lot sub­stan­tial­ly as follows:

“The leg­is­la­ture imposed, with­out a vote of the peo­ple, (iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of tax and descrip­tion of increase), cost­ing (most up-to-date ten-year cost pro­jec­tion, expressed in dol­lars and round­ed to the near­est mil­lion) in its first ten years, for gov­ern­ment spend­ing. This tax increase should be:

Repealed .…  [ ]
Maintained .…[ ]”

Sat­ur­days, Sun­days, and legal hol­i­days are not count­ed in cal­cu­lat­ing the time lim­its in this section.

The words “This tax increase should be: Repealed … [ ] Main­tained … [ ]” are not count­ed in the thir­ty-three word lim­it for a short descrip­tion under this section.

Empha­sis above is mine.

Our team at NPI regards “advi­so­ry votes” as a form of vot­er sup­pres­sion because they con­fuse vot­ers and inter­rupt the act of vot­ing. They are a can­cer on our bal­lots. They need to be abol­ished. We are com­mit­ted to get­ting Sen­ate Bill 5182 passed to replace them with use­ful, truth­ful infor­ma­tion in the voter’s pam­phlet, and we hope to have Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers’ help in doing so.

Vot­ers who want to express their view on ESSB 5096 or any oth­er bill enact­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture dur­ing the past ses­sion should write to their leg­is­la­tors and engage in a dia­logue with them… or sign up to par­tic­i­pate in an online tax study town hall to be part of a larg­er con­ver­sa­tion about the state’s tax code. The Leg­is­la­ture is hold­ing sev­er­al of those this month. They’re open to the pub­lic and we encour­age you to attend. You can obtain the sched­ule and RSVP here.