Thanks to the recent suc­cess of NPI’s leg­is­la­tion to clean up Ever­green State bal­lots and remove a bar­ri­er to vot­ing, Wash­ing­ton vot­ers won’t be see­ing any anti-tax pro­pa­gan­da from for­mer ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman at or near the top of their gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lots when they go to vote this year.

But they will see in a page in the voter’s pam­phlet alert­ing them to the exis­tence of the new fis­cal dash­board cre­at­ed by the Leg­isla­tive Eval­u­a­tion and Account­abil­i­ty Pro­gram (LEAP) and the Office of Finan­cial Management.

Titled Bud­get­ing For Wash­ing­ton’s Future, this page in the voter’s pam­phlet offers a quick response code, URL, and phone num­ber to help vot­ers reach the dash­board. It also con­tains a short sum­ma­ry of each of the state’s three reg­u­lar­ly adopt­ed bud­gets, to help demys­ti­fy the state’s finances for voters.

Take a look:

As you can see, the page con­tains only neu­tral­ly word­ed, fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion. That is by design. When we were devel­op­ing our bill to get rid of Eyman’s “advi­so­ry votes” (which were real­ly push polls), we made a con­scious choice to do more than just get rid of some­thing bad — we want­ed to cre­ate some­thing use­ful as a replace­ment for “advi­so­ry votes” — some­thing that could help voters.

So that’s why Sen­ate Bill 5082, spon­sored by our cham­pi­ons Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Kud­er­er and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Amy Walen, pro­vid­ed for the cre­ation of not just the afore­men­tioned fis­cal dash­board, but this Bud­get­ing For Wash­ing­ton’s Future page in the voter’s pam­phlet. For the fis­cal dash­board to be a use­ful resource, Wash­ing­ton vot­ers need to know about it and know how to find it.

That’s why it’s now a required ele­ment of the state-lev­el voter’s pamphlet.

The idea to pro­vide a one page infos­heet for the dash­board with a QR code was sug­gest­ed by Sec­re­tary of State Steve Hobbs and his staff, and we embraced that idea for the final ver­sion of the leg­is­la­tion, now cod­i­fied as RCW 29A.32.031 (8):

The vot­ers’ pam­phlet pub­lished or dis­trib­uted under RCW 29A.32.010 must contain:

[…]

(8) A page pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion about how to access the inter­net pre­sen­ta­tion of the infor­ma­tion cre­at­ed in RCW 44.48.160 about the state bud­gets, includ­ing a uni­form resource loca­tor, a quick response code, and a phone num­ber for the leg­isla­tive infor­ma­tion cen­ter. The uni­form resource loca­tor and quick response codes will lead the vot­er to the inter­net infor­ma­tion required in RCW 44.48.160;

It’s great to see our leg­is­la­tion now ful­ly imple­ment­ed. This was the final piece!

We know from our pub­lic opin­ion research that the voter’s pam­phlet is far and away the most impor­tant and most trust­ed source of infor­ma­tion for vot­ers at elec­tion time. It’s there­fore an ide­al vehi­cle for point­ing vot­ers to the fis­cal dash­board. The bal­lot itself is not an appro­pri­ate place for adver­tis­ing or announce­ments — it’s the sacred space where we make the impor­tant, con­se­quen­tial deci­sions about who rep­re­sents us and what laws we should have.

It took half a decade to get Sen­ate Bill 5082 from the draw­ing board to Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk for sig­na­ture, but we were per­sis­tent… and per­sis­tence can real­ly pay off! If you appre­ci­ate our research and advo­ca­cy for bet­ter bal­lots and elec­toral jus­tice in the Pacif­ic North­west, we invite you to sup­port the work of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute. Make a dona­tion here (all cred­it card fees will be cov­ered by our proces­sor!) or sign up to give annu­al­ly or month­ly.