Pandemic-era initiative drought continues as no measures qualify for statewide ballot

For the third straight year, vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State will not see any statewide ini­tia­tives on their bal­lots this autumn.

Today was the dead­line to turn in sig­na­tures for ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple for 2022, and no cam­paigns made appoint­ments to sub­mit sig­na­tures, Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs’ staff told the North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute.

Two cam­paigns had been fundrais­ing with the hopes of get­ting on the ballot.

The first, helmed by for­mer Dino Rossi advi­sor J. Van­der Stoep and oper­a­tive Mark Funk, want­ed to repeal the state’s cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy.

The I‑1929 effort raised over three quar­ters of a mil­lion dol­lars but fold­ed with­out gath­er­ing a sin­gle sig­na­ture. Report­ed­ly, donors balked at putting up more mon­ey to qual­i­fy a mea­sure that would have dubi­ous chances of passing.

(Research by NPI and oth­ers has shown that the state’s cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy is durably pop­u­lar, to the cha­grin of its oppo­nents, like The Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter, and that I‑1929 faced steep odds.)

The sec­ond, spon­sored by the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union of Wash­ing­ton, sought to decrim­i­nal­ize drug pos­ses­sion while increas­ing resources for treat­ment. The I‑1922 effort raised over $3.5 mil­lion and was gath­er­ing sig­na­tures right up until a few days ago, when its dri­ve was abrupt­ly can­celed.

Orga­niz­ers indi­cat­ed that a lack of mon­ey was hin­der­ing them from fin­ish­ing the sig­na­ture dri­ve with a suf­fi­cient num­ber of sig­na­tures to enable them to qualify.

The num­ber of sig­na­tures required to get a mea­sure onto the statewide bal­lot in Wash­ing­ton is cur­rent­ly 324,516, equiv­a­lent to 8% of the num­ber of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who vot­ed in the last elec­tion for governor.

This thresh­old is explic­it­ly spec­i­fied by the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion, allow­ing the sig­na­ture require­ment to rise or fall based on vot­er turnout.

Wash­ing­ton elects its gov­er­nors in high-turnout pres­i­den­tial years and the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion had the sec­ond high­est over­all turnout in state his­to­ry, which result­ed in a big increase in the sig­na­ture requirement.

No cam­paign has met that new require­ment since it took effect.

It remains ridicu­lous­ly easy to file ini­tia­tives. The fil­ing fee, which has­n’t been raised since the ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum were cre­at­ed, is only five dol­lars. Over two hun­dred ini­tia­tives (main­ly vari­a­tions of the same schemes) were filed this year, includ­ing by Tim Eyman, whose ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry has been inop­er­a­ble for sev­er­al years, par­a­lyzed by a lack of cash from wealthy benefactors.

The high­er sig­na­ture require­ment is not the main obsta­cle to cam­paigns get­ting on the bal­lot nowa­days, how­ev­er. Rather, it’s the ill health of the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing indus­try, which has his­tor­i­cal­ly oper­at­ed in the shad­ows and on a cash basis. Most ini­tia­tive cam­paigns rely on the labor of paid peti­tion­ers to qual­i­fy (it’s very hard to cre­ate and a sus­tain a vol­un­teer sig­na­ture gath­er­ing force), and costs have gone up at the same time the avail­able labor force has decreased.

It did­n’t help that firms in the indus­try were already in trou­ble even before the pan­dem­ic. For instance, Tim Eyman’s bud­dy Roy Ruffi­no of “Cit­i­zen Solu­tions” agreed to run a dri­ve for I‑1000 pro­po­nent Jesse Wineber­ry in 2018 on spec (mean­ing, Ruffi­no’s crews pro­vid­ed labor in exchange for a promise to be paid rather than for cash upfront, which is the norm). When Wineber­ry’s oper­a­tion failed to pay as agreed, Ruffi­no and the work­ers he hired were left high and dry.

I‑1000 and I‑976 (the last Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive that qual­i­fied for the bal­lot) were the last two ini­tia­tives to make the bal­lot in Wash­ing­ton. They appeared before vot­ers in 2019, but they actu­al­ly qual­i­fied in 2018 because they began as ini­tia­tives to the Leg­is­la­ture. It has been almost four years since any statewide ini­tia­tive sig­na­ture dri­ve end­ed with a suc­cess­ful turn-in event.

With a Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­fec­ta firm­ly in place since that year (when Democ­rats won big majori­ties in both cham­bers), pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions have con­cen­trat­ed on secur­ing wins through the leg­isla­tive process, while right wing groups have fum­bled and feud­ed, unable to get their act togeth­er. In the past, the Repub­li­can Par­ty and oth­er groups would have ral­lied around what­ev­er Tim Eyman was doing, but Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry is in pieces along with “Cit­i­zen Solutions.”

At around this time last year, I dis­cussed how the pan­dem­ic, cou­pled with the high­er sig­na­ture require­ment, has altered the direct democ­ra­cy land­scape. While the “lock­down phase” of the pan­dem­ic is over, the pan­dem­ic is still rag­ing and its ram­i­fi­ca­tions con­tin­ue to be felt. The cur­rent ini­tia­tive drought will end at some point, but not this year, and per­haps not in 2023, either.