Tim Eyman’s lawsuit to force more anti-tax propaganda onto 2022 ballots gets quashed

A pro se law­suit recent­ly filed by right wing provo­ca­teur Tim Eyman that sought to load up Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ 2022 bal­lots with addi­tion­al anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da has end­ed in fail­ure after the State Supreme Court issued a spe­cial order deem­ing Eyman’s legal chal­lenge untime­ly, thus putting the kibosh on his scheme.

Eyman filed the law­suit after Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office deter­mined that only two bills passed in the 2022 leg­isla­tive ses­sion would be sub­ject­ed to Eyman’s “advi­so­ry votes,” which are anti-tax bal­lot pro­pa­gan­da, this year.

Statewide “advi­so­ry votes,” for read­ers who are unaware, are a form of fake bal­lot mea­sure con­coct­ed by Eyman years ago which non­sen­si­cal­ly ask whether already-passed bills increas­ing state rev­enue should be “main­tained” or “repealed.” Though they are meant to look like ref­er­en­da, they are actu­al­ly a form of pro­pa­gan­da dressed up in the form of a bal­lot mea­sure. Eyman’s goal with them is to under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in gov­ern­ment and whip up anti-tax sentiment.

This sum­mer, Eyman want­ed addi­tion­al leg­is­la­tion (specif­i­cal­ly, a bill updat­ing the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act) to be sub­ject­ed to his anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da this year, so he filed a law­suit to make that hap­pen. Iron­i­cal­ly, the case was assigned to the same Supe­ri­or Court judge, James Dixon, who found against Eyman in the land­mark cam­paign finance enforce­ment case filed by Ferguson.

After Dixon grant­ed Eyman a pre­lim­i­nary win in the form of a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order, Fer­gu­son and Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs filed an emer­gency appeal with the Wash­ing­ton State Supreme Court. The Court respond­ed with a short order which instruct­ed Dixon to dis­miss Eyman’s case.

The Court not­ed that the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act orig­i­nal­ly passed in 2021 and that Eyman did not chal­lenge the AGO’s con­clu­sion that it did not need to be sub­ject­ed to Eyman’s anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da last year.

“Respon­dent in 2021 did not chal­lenge the attor­ney general’s fail­ure to refer E2SSB 5126 for place­ment on the 2021 gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot for an advi­so­ry vote, and respondent’s action first seek­ing a declara­to­ry judg­ment requir­ing place­ment of the mea­sure on the 2022 gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot is untime­ly. Though the mea­sure was amend­ed in 2022, those amend­ments do not affect the pro­vi­sions respon­dent con­tends con­sti­tute a tax in order to pro­vide a basis for now sub­mit­ting the mea­sure to an advi­so­ry vote,” the order reasoned.

Dixon, observ­ing that his hands were tied, did as instruct­ed while Eyman wailed.

“It is absolute­ly mad­den­ing that the Attor­ney Gen­er­al and the supreme court con­spired to block the peo­ple from learn­ing about and vot­ing on the Democ­rats’ $3.9 bil­lion Cap & Trade bill,” Eyman groused in a mis­sive to his email list.

That’s non­sense, of course. If Eyman had won his law­suit, the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton would­n’t have been vot­ing on the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act. Rather, they would have been shown some anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da writ­ten by Eyman.

Yes, writ­ten by Eyman. You see, unlike with real bal­lot mea­sures, which have bal­lot titles draft­ed by the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office, the for­mat of “advi­so­ry votes” and their word­ing is dic­tat­ed by an old ini­tia­tive that Tim Eyman sponsored.

Thus, the item Eyman want­ed would have read some­thing like this:

The leg­is­la­ture imposed, with­out a vote of the peo­ple, a new tax on pol­lu­tion cost­ing ____ in its first ten years, for gov­ern­ment spending.

This tax increase should be

[ ] Repealed
[ ] Maintained

Regard­less of whether peo­ple vote Repealed or Main­tained on these things, noth­ing hap­pens… because “advi­so­ry votes” are fake bal­lot mea­sures.

A real bal­lot mea­sure changes the law, as a vot­er would right­ly expect.

If an ini­tia­tive pass­es, a new law is cre­at­ed. If a ref­er­en­dum is suc­cess­ful, a pre­vi­ous­ly approved law is repealed. If a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment gets more yea votes than nays, our plan of gov­ern­ment gets changed.

But with “advi­so­ry votes,” 95% of vot­ers vot­ing could check the oval for “Repealed,” as goad­ed by Eyman’s inflam­ma­to­ry, prej­u­di­cial ques­tions, and absolute­ly noth­ing would hap­pen. The law would not change.

Eyman’s gripes about the process that result­ed in this out­come are also hilarious.

The Sec­re­tary of State and Attor­ney Gen­er­al have every right to appeal a tri­al court deci­sion they think is wrong, even if it’s not a “final” decision.

There is no con­spir­a­cy here and no one is depriv­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans of their cher­ished right to vote, or their right to know. It is essen­tial to under­stand that “advi­so­ry votes” are not bal­lot mea­sures. They are instead pieces of pro­pa­gan­da being print­ed at tax­pay­er expense to advance an anti-tax agenda.

The demise of Eyman’s law­suit sim­ply means that there will be few­er of them on this year’s bal­lot. That is a good out­come for vot­ers and for democracy.

NPI has worked for years to get rid of “advi­so­ry votes,” and that effort will con­tin­ue in the next leg­isla­tive ses­sion. A grow­ing num­ber of law­mak­ers, led by Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er and Sen­a­tor Sam Hunt, rec­og­nize that “advi­so­ry votes” are mali­cious and harm­ful and need to be repealed. We’ll keep work­ing with them and the Sen­si­ble Bal­lots coali­tion to replace “advi­so­ry votes” with truth­ful, use­ful infor­ma­tion about the Leg­is­la­ture’s fis­cal deci­sions in the voter’s pamphlet.