VICTORY! Right wing measure to destroy Dayton library removed from the ballot

A legal­ly dubi­ous right wing attempt to dis­solve the only pub­lic library in tiny Colum­bia Coun­ty was nixed today after Supe­ri­or Court Com­mis­sion­er Julie Karl put the kibosh on the mea­sure, rul­ing that it was “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, pro­ce­du­ral­ly invalid and [that] the sig­na­ture gath­er­ing was marred by ‘poten­tial crim­i­nal acts,’” as con­cise­ly sum­ma­rized by Seat­tle Times reporter David Gut­man.

Kar­l’s deci­sion means that Propo­si­tion 2 will not go before vot­ers this autumn. The library will no longer face the immi­nent threat of dis­so­lu­tion from angry rur­al vot­ers incit­ed by a group of extrem­ists led by right wing activist Jes­si­ca Ruf­f­corn, who is obsessed with cen­sor­ship and bar­ring oth­ers from access­ing mate­ri­als she does­n’t approve of, includ­ing books that address top­ics such as consent.

Ruf­f­corn at first tried to intim­i­date library trustees into remov­ing books from the shelves. When she did­n’t get the response or the results she want­ed, she then sought to exploit a pro­vi­sion in a Wash­ing­ton State statute, name­ly RCW 27.12.320, that allows for rur­al library dis­tricts to be dissolved:

… pur­suant to a major­i­ty vote of all of the qual­i­fied elec­tors resid­ing out­side of incor­po­rat­ed cities and towns vot­ing upon a propo­si­tion for its dis­so­lu­tion, at a gen­er­al elec­tion, which propo­si­tion may be placed upon the bal­lot at any such elec­tion when­ev­er a peti­tion by ten per­cent or more qual­i­fied vot­ers resid­ing out­side of incor­po­rat­ed cities or towns with­in a rur­al coun­ty library dis­trict, an island library dis­trict, or an inter­coun­ty rur­al library dis­trict request­ing such dis­so­lu­tion shall be filed with the board of trustees of such dis­trict not less than nine­ty days pri­or to the hold­ing of any such election.

The Day­ton Memo­r­i­al Library dates back to 1937, when it opened after a near­ly twen­ty-year effort to secure the resources to build a library for the Colum­bia Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty. For decades, the library was admin­is­tered by the City of Day­ton and sup­port­ed exclu­sive­ly with city tax dol­lars, but in the ear­ly 2000s, with the real­iza­tion that a larg­er and more sta­ble tax base was need­ed to secure the library’s future, the Colum­bia Coun­ty Rur­al Library Dis­trict was formed.

The cre­ation of the dis­trict empow­ered the com­mu­ni­ty the library was serv­ing out­side of the Day­ton city lim­its to pay dues in sup­port of the library. But since rur­al library dis­tricts can­not, by law, include res­i­dents of incor­po­rat­ed towns among their elec­tors, the peo­ple of Day­ton were fac­ing the prospect of hav­ing their library’s future decid­ed only by their more rur­al neigh­bors — with­out them.

On Sep­tem­ber 6th, Karl had grant­ed a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order (TRO) against Propo­si­tion 2, which expired as of 3:30 PM today. The TRO enjoined Colum­bia Coun­ty from send­ing out bal­lots with the mea­sure on them. Today, as planned, Karl heard argu­ments in favor of a pre­lim­i­nary injunction.

Kar­l’s deci­sion, issued from the bench, was wit­nessed by a packed court­room that includ­ed Kate Smith of the Wal­la Wal­la Union-Bul­letin. Like Gut­man, Smith empha­sized in her sto­ry that Karl found prob­lems at every lev­el with Ruf­f­corn’s mea­sure, includ­ing the sig­na­tures on the peti­tions Ruf­f­corn cir­cu­lat­ed:

Neigh­bors Unit­ed for Progress, a local polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, filed a com­plaint alleg­ing that the mea­sure to dis­solve the county’s library dis­trict con­flicts with fed­er­al and state con­sti­tu­tions and dis­en­fran­chis­es city vot­ers and that the effort to get it on the bal­lot was invalid and wrought with fraud.

Karl agreed, find­ing that the state statute out­lin­ing the dis­so­lu­tion process for rur­al library dis­tricts like Colum­bia County’s was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and incon­sis­tent as applied.

“It doesn’t make sense to have peo­ple that live in the coun­ty be the only ones that vote on some­thing that so much affects the cit­i­zens of the city,” Karl said at the hear­ing. “We did away with tax­a­tion with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion a long time ago.”

Karl also said the peti­tion process was invalid and there is good cause to believe sig­na­ture gath­er­ing for the peti­tion was fraudulent.

“It is telling that in the ini­tial peti­tion pre­sent­ed, two-thirds of the sig­na­tures were invalid,” she said.

Sig­na­ture fraud is a long-run­ning prob­lem that our team at NPI has been study­ing and track­ing for many years. At the state lev­el, it is inves­ti­gat­ed by the State Patrol, and there have been times in the past where fraud­u­lent sig­na­tures on right wing peti­tions have been dis­cov­ered by elec­tion work­ers and referred to the Patrol for inves­ti­ga­tion. Catch­ing fraud­sters isn’t easy, but the Patrol has been able to iden­ti­fy and arrest the cul­prits in at least some of the cases.

Giv­en the evi­dence of fraud in this case, Colum­bia Coun­ty should open an inves­ti­ga­tion. Ruf­f­corn and her asso­ciates’ oper­a­tions should be probed.

If they broke the law, they should be prosecuted.

Ruf­f­corn is, accord­ing to Neigh­bors Unit­ed for Progress’ ini­tial com­plaint filed on August 29th, plan­ning to move to some­place in Repub­li­can-dom­i­nat­ed Texas rather than remain­ing in south­east­ern Wash­ing­ton, “on infor­ma­tion and belief.”

NPI con­grat­u­lates Neigh­bors Unit­ed for Progress on today’s great vic­to­ry over cen­sor­ship, fear, and oppres­sion. Democ­ra­cy and com­mu­ni­ty won today over right wing extrem­ism. This is a great out­come for free­dom in the Pacif­ic Northwest.