NPI-requested bill to repeal Eyman’s push polls moves out of Senate State Government

Leg­is­la­tion request­ed by NPI and intro­duced by Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er that would per­ma­nent­ly abol­ish Tim Eyman’s advi­so­ry votes push polls and replace them with truth­ful, use­ful fis­cal infor­ma­tion is on the move in the Wash­ing­ton State Senate.

Sen­ate Bill 5082 was pre­filed last month; it offi­cial­ly dropped this week with a whop­ping four­teen cospon­sors — near­ly half of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic caucus!

The spon­sors are:

• Pat­ty Kuderer
• Sam Hunt
• Steve Con­way
• Man­ka Dhingra
• Noel Frame
• Bob Hasegawa
• Joe Nguyen
• T’wina Nobles
• Jamie Ped­er­sen
• Chris­tine Rolfes
• Javier Valdez
• Kevin Van De Wege
• Lisa Well­man
• Claire Wil­son

Our thanks to all of them for sign­ing onto this bill.

After get­ting a hear­ing on the sec­ond day of ses­sion ear­li­er this week, the bill was report­ed out of the Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee today with a “do pass” major­i­ty rec­om­men­da­tion. The com­mit­tee also adopt­ed a strik­ing amend­ment we sup­port that makes minor changes to the por­tion of the leg­is­la­tion that replaces “advi­so­ry votes” with truth­ful, use­ful fis­cal information.

That amend­ment pro­vides for an online pre­sen­ta­tion of the bud­get sum­maries con­tem­plat­ed in the orig­i­nal bill, with a quick response code, phone num­ber, and URL in the print­ed voter’s pam­phlet to help vot­ers locate the information.

The bill has a fis­cal note.

For the first time since the incep­tion of this leg­is­la­tion, we have a Sec­re­tary of State, Steve Hobbs, who firm­ly sup­ports doing away with “advi­so­ry votes.” We are grate­ful to Sec­re­tary Hobbs for his enthu­si­asm and encouragement.

NPI’s research shows our bill would save tax­pay­ers mil­lions of dol­lars in bal­lot design, print­ing, and tab­u­la­tion costs every year due to the elim­i­na­tion of “advi­so­ry votes,” which waste space on our bal­lots. There would also be some small costs asso­ci­at­ed with the prepa­ra­tion of the replace­ment fis­cal infor­ma­tion. Con­se­quent­ly, SB 5082 has been referred to Sen­ate Ways & Means. Chair Chris­tine Rolfes is, as men­tioned above, a cospon­sor of the legislation.

The roll call on the bill in Sen­ate State Gov­ern­ment was as follows:

Sup­port­ing a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tors Sam Hunt, Pat­ty Kud­er­er, Bob Hasegawa, Javier Valdez (all cospon­sors of the bill)

Offer­ing a “do not pass” rec­om­men­da­tion: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Phil Fortunato

With­out rec­om­men­da­tion: Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors Jeff Wil­son and Per­ry Dozier

“Advi­so­ry vote” cre­ator Tim Eyman is not sur­pris­ing­ly livid that we are con­tin­u­ing our noble efforts to lib­er­ate our bal­lots from his pro­pa­gan­da. Because he was­n’t pay­ing atten­tion (by his own admis­sion!), he hilar­i­ous­ly missed the hear­ing on SB 5082 and did not tes­ti­fy, spar­ing every­one on the com­mit­tee and all the oth­er tes­ti­fiers from hav­ing to lis­ten to one of his grat­ing, insult-laden tirades.

Annoyed with him­self, Eyman asked Chair Sam Hunt for spe­cial leave to recon­vene the hear­ing so he could deliv­er a dia­tribe to the State Gov­ern­ment Com­mit­tee before the exec­u­tive ses­sion today (a request that quick­ly became the sub­ject of jokes around the Capi­tol Cam­pus), but his plea went unanswered.

Eyman did make the hear­ing on the House com­pan­ion bill, HB 1158, the fol­low­ing day (Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 11th). HB 1158 is iden­ti­cal­ly word­ed to SB 5082 as it exist­ed when it was intro­duced at the begin­ning of the 2023 session.

HB 1158 has twen­ty-two spon­sors, includ­ing prime spon­sor Amy Walen (D‑48th Dis­trict: Belle­vue, Kirk­land, Red­mond). At that hear­ing, Eyman called the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State “slaves” while denounc­ing our leg­is­la­tion; this prompt­ed com­mit­tee Chair Bill Ramos to gav­el Eyman out of order and declare his tes­ti­mo­ny at an end. (A video clip of Eyman’s offen­sive com­ments is avail­able here.)

NPI extends its most pro­found thanks to the State Gov­ern­ment & Elec­tions Com­mit­tee for quick­ly advanc­ing SB 5082 for­ward for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion in the Sen­ate. This is leg­is­la­tion that will ben­e­fit all Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, knock­ing down a prob­lem­at­ic bar­ri­er to vot­ing and rid­ding our bal­lots of anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da.