State House hears NPI’s bill to make it easier to vote by ending Tim Eyman’s push polls

Today, the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ State Gov­ern­ment & Trib­al Rela­tions Com­mit­tee held a pub­lic hear­ing on NPI’s leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish and replace Tim Eyman’s advi­so­ry votes push polls — those pieces of anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da that have been appear­ing on Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ bal­lots since 2012.

Spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er (D‑48th Dis­trict: Belle­vue, Red­mond, Kirk­land), Sen­ate Bill 5082 would get rid of the push polls and replace them with truth­ful, use­ful infor­ma­tion about the state’s finances, acces­si­ble from the offi­cial leg­isla­tive web­site and the voter’s pam­phlet via a QR code and URL.

The bill is sup­port­ed by Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs, the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Coun­ty Audi­tors, the Wash­ing­ton Vot­ing Jus­tice Coali­tion, the Bal­ance Our Tax Code Coali­tion, the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, AFL-CIO and the labor move­ment, the League of Women Vot­ers of Wash­ing­ton, and a long, long list of orga­ni­za­tions that work on bal­lot access.

SB 5082 received a bipar­ti­san vote in the Sen­ate last month and is now under con­sid­er­a­tion in the House. If approved there with no fur­ther changes, the leg­is­la­tion would go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to be signed into law.

I tes­ti­fied for the bill at the hear­ing along with NPI Leg­isla­tive Direc­tor Kathy Saka­hara. My tes­ti­mo­ny focused on the grow­ing momen­tum for the bill and the sup­port we’ve received from edi­to­r­i­al boards, includ­ing The Seat­tle Times.

Kathy’s tes­ti­mo­ny focused on the pub­lic opin­ion research we’ve designed and com­mis­sioned over the years that finds repeal­ing Eyman’s “advi­so­ry votes” is some­thing vot­ers want — includ­ing a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of Repub­li­can vot­ers, who want the state to take advan­tage of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to save tax dol­lars and get gov­ern­ment out of the push polling business.

Also tes­ti­fy­ing for the bill were:

• Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs
• King Coun­ty Elec­tions Direc­tor Julie Wise
• Joseph Lach­man and Hai­ley Wu from the Asian Coun­sel­ing and Refer­ral Ser­vice (ACRS)
• Abi­gail Leong from the Wash­ing­ton Vot­ing Jus­tice Coalition
• Joe Kendo from the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, AFL-CIO
• Patrick Schoettmer, a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence from Seat­tle University
• Jazmine Smith from The Wash­ing­ton Bus
• Cindy Black from Fix Democ­ra­cy First
• Car­ol Sul­li­van from the League of Women Vot­ers of Washington
• Steve Zemke from Major­i­tyRules, an NPI Advi­so­ry Councilmember
• Julie Andrze­jew­s­ki from Indivisible
• Kari Bull from Fair­Vote Washington
• Kristin Ang from Faith Action Network

As expect­ed, Tim Eyman appeared in oppo­si­tion to the bill along with sev­er­al friends and allies, such as Antho­ny Mix­er, Julie Bar­rett, and Jeff Peck.

Eyman’s cohorts kept their tes­ti­mo­ny to the one-minute time lim­it just like the pro tes­ti­fiers, but Eyman did not. Eyman came for­ward to tes­ti­fy with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing a scene, offer­ing inflam­ma­to­ry com­ments that he knew would cause him to be gaveled down by Chair Bill Ramos. Eyman also delib­er­ate­ly went over his time lim­it and con­tin­ued speak­ing well after the light had turned red.

Eyman had Mix­er film­ing him from the seats in the hear­ing room while he engaged in his planned-in-advance grand­stand­ing. His objec­tive? To gen­er­ate fod­der and a video for an email mis­sive he’d send after the hear­ing where he would yelp about being silenced and cen­sored by Demo­c­ra­t­ic legislators.

Ramos banged his gav­el, instruct­ed Eyman to stop talk­ing, told staff to cut his mic and even paused the hear­ing to try to com­pel Eyman to end his theatrics.

None of that worked, so secu­ri­ty staff were sum­moned to inter­rupt Eyman’s grand­stand­ing. Eyman kept talk­ing and paid no atten­tion until the secu­ri­ty offi­cer walked up and leaned over to speak to him. Then he shut up like a clam and returned to his seat. You can see the sequence of events in this video:

Hilar­i­ous­ly, the last words Eyman audi­bly spoke were: “This is disrespectful.”

He was­n’t refer­ring to his own tes­ti­mo­ny, but he might as well have been.

Eyman has long been dis­re­spect­ful and con­temp­tu­ous in set­tings such as pub­lic hear­ings like these. It is impor­tant that peo­ple under­stand that it’s an act. Eyman is a per­former who craves atten­tion. He has his­tor­i­cal­ly rev­eled and rel­ished in rhetor­i­cal joust­ing, believ­ing it is good for pub­lic­i­ty. How­ev­er, few­er and few­er jour­nal­ists are inter­est­ed in cov­er­ing his antics any­more, which is a good thing.

Eyman and Repub­li­cans (the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Ladies of Wash­ing­ton, and oth­ers) also made a huge push to get peo­ple to sign in con against the bill, hop­ing to be able to claim that oppo­si­tion was over­whelm­ing and sup­port mea­ger based pure­ly on the sign-ins, which are an unsci­en­tif­ic met­ric of pub­lic sup­port and opposition.

How­ev­er, this gam­bit was unsuc­cess­ful. NPI, the Wash­ing­ton Vot­ing Jus­tice Coali­tion, Indi­vis­i­ble, and the wider pro­gres­sive move­ment orga­nized a sign-in call to action of our own, and in the end, we suc­ceed­ed in recruit­ing more peo­ple to sign in pro than Eyman’s camp was able to recruit con. By Take Action Net­work’s count, there were 1,448 peo­ple sign­ing in pro and 1,165 sign­ing in con.

The next step for SB 5082 is to earn a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion from the State Gov­ern­ment & Trib­al Rela­tions Com­mit­tee in an exec­u­tive ses­sion. It can then go to the Rules Com­mit­tee for review and selec­tion for floor action.