An ambi­tious statewide ini­tia­tive that sought to decrim­i­nal­ize drug pos­ses­sion in Wash­ing­ton State and replace fail­ing drug laws with a pub­lic health approach won’t be on the Novem­ber 2022 bal­lot, orga­niz­ers announced this week.

Com­mit to Change Wash­ing­ton, which is backed by a coali­tion led and finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU), said in an email on Mon­day and in a sub­se­quent arti­cle repub­lished yes­ter­day that they have made “the dif­fi­cult deci­sion to cease sig­na­ture gath­er­ing efforts this weekend.” 

“We will not be mov­ing for­ward to qual­i­fy Wash­ing­ton State Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure No. 1922 to the Novem­ber 8th gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot,” the cam­paign said. “Sig­na­ture gath­er­ing proved more chal­leng­ing and pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive than projected.” 

I‑1922 faced a dead­line of 5 PM on July 8th to turn in about 405,000 sig­na­tures. The min­i­mum num­ber of valid sig­na­tures is 324,516 and a cush­ion of about 25% is rec­om­mend­ed to off­set dupli­cate and invalid sig­na­tures. Mea­sures sub­mit­ted with a sig­na­ture cush­ion are usu­al­ly val­i­dat­ed with a ran­dom sam­ple check by tem­po­rary elec­tions staff hired by the Office of the Sec­re­tary of State.

Accord­ing to reports filed with the PDC, the effort to qual­i­fy I‑1922 had raised $3,509,246.62, with $2,685,185.56 spent and out­stand­ing debt of $669,413.21.

Com­mit to Change Wash­ing­ton’s announce­ment did not say how many sig­na­tures had been gath­ered since its dri­ve began ear­li­er this year.

I‑1922 is the sec­ond ini­tia­tive effort to founder before this year’s sig­na­ture dead­line. A few weeks ago, an effort to repeal the state’s cap­i­tal gains tax col­lapsed, though unlike I‑1922, that cam­paign did­n’t gath­er a sin­gle signature.

“This is espe­cial­ly hard news for us, because we were going to win,” Com­mit to Change Wash­ing­ton’s email to sup­port­ers declared.

“A recent poll by Data for Progress found that Wash­ing­ton vot­ers sup­port­ed I‑1922 by a very wide mar­gin – upon read­ing the bal­lot lan­guage, 67% said they’d vote for the mea­sure and only 22% against it, with 11% undecided.”

That poll, con­duct­ed from June 3rd to 9th, was released by Data For Progress on the same day that Com­mit to Change Wash­ing­ton announced the demise of I‑1922. The sam­ple con­sist­ed of 462 respon­dents, all of whom par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The respon­dents were asked the fol­low­ing question:

Some groups in Wash­ing­ton are propos­ing a bal­lot mea­sure that reads as follows:

This mea­sure con­cerns drug use, treat­ment and penal­ties, and relat­ed fund­ing. This mea­sure would fund sub­stance use dis­or­der pre­ven­tion, out­reach, recov­ery, train­ing, study and pub­lic edu­ca­tion; decrim­i­nal­ize drug pos­ses­sion but allow seizure and for­fei­ture; autho­rize vaca­tion of cer­tain drug-relat­ed con­vic­tions; and amend relat­ed laws.

If the elec­tion were held today, would you vote for this mea­sure or against this measure?

The 67% sup­port Data For Progress found is far high­er than what Fair­bank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Asso­ciates (FM3) found when the firm test­ed the I‑1922 bal­lot title in March of 2022. In FM3’s poll, 53% indi­cat­ed sup­port (26% def­i­nite­ly, 20% some­what, 6% unde­cid­ed but lean yes), while 39% indi­cat­ed oppo­si­tion (26% def­i­nite­ly, 11% prob­a­bly, 2% unde­cid­ed but lean no.)

You can see the find­ing here in this slide deck pro­vid­ed by the cam­paign.

Our team at NPI also recent­ly test­ed the I‑1922 bal­lot title (NPI’s board took a posi­tion sup­port­ing I‑1922 last month), and the results we got were pret­ty sim­i­lar to the results that FM3 got. We found 52% total sup­port and 33% total oppo­si­tion. That indi­cates that the actu­al lev­el of sup­port is about what FM3 orig­i­nal­ly found, rather than the much high­er 67% found by Data For Progress.

Here’s the exact text of the ques­tion we asked, and the respons­es we received:

QUESTION: This Novem­ber, there may be an ini­tia­tive on the statewide bal­lot con­cern­ing drug use treat­ment and penal­ties and relat­ed fund­ing. The offi­cial descrip­tion is as fol­lows: This mea­sure would fund sub­stance use dis­or­der pre­ven­tion, out­reach, recov­ery, train­ing, study, and pub­lic edu­ca­tion; decrim­i­nal­ize drug pos­ses­sion but allow seizure and for­fei­ture; autho­rize vaca­tion of cer­tain drug-relat­ed con­vic­tions; and amend relat­ed laws. If the elec­tion were being held today, would you def­i­nite­ly vote yes in favor, prob­a­bly vote yes in favor, prob­a­bly vote no against, or def­i­nite­ly vote no against this initiative?

ANSWERS:

• Yes: 52%
  • Would def­i­nite­ly vote yes: 29%
  • Would prob­a­bly vote yes: 23%
• No: 33%
  • Would prob­a­bly vote no: 13%
  • Would def­i­nite­ly vote no: 20%
• Not sure: 14%

Since I‑1922 won’t appear on the bal­lot, we will nev­er know how it would have fared with vot­ers had it qual­i­fied. Although the bal­lot title did not per­form as well in our test­ing this month and in FM3’s ear­li­er research as it did in Data For Progress’ poll, all three sur­veys did find major­i­ty sup­port for the measure.

That is strong evi­dence that most Wash­ing­to­ni­ans do favor a shift from “crim­i­nal­iz­ing peo­ple who use drugs and focus instead on pub­lic health strate­gies we know are more effec­tive at address­ing the root caus­es of sub­stance use dis­or­der,” as Com­mit to Change Wash­ing­ton’s cam­paign update put it.

The coali­tion now plans to refo­cus its efforts on the leg­isla­tive process.

“We know our work must con­tin­ue; Wash­ing­ton State’s cur­rent drug pos­ses­sion penal­ties are set to expire July 1st, 2023, and we expect the leg­is­la­ture to take up the mat­ter in the 2023 ses­sion that begins Jan­u­ary 9th,” the cam­paign said.

We thank Com­mit to Change Wash­ing­ton for their work on I‑1922 and will be sup­port­ing the efforts to pre­pare for next year’s leg­isla­tive session.