Another Eyman initiative falls short

Just months after failing to gather enough signatures for his anti-gay-rights Referendum 65, Washington’s most prolific ballot-measure promoter got more bad news Thursday.

His second measure also fell short.

Tim Eyman’s Initiative 917, which sought to torpedo new vehicle-weight fees and other transportation-related taxes, failed to get the 224,880 signatures needed to win it a place on the November ballot. State election officials, who’ve been checking the signatures for weeks, have now rejected so many that there’s no way Eyman will have enough.

“It’s dead. It’s over,” said Mark Funk, spokesman for a coalition of business, labor and environmental groups supporting the new taxes.

Eyman, in a statement e-mailed to reporters, said that the effort had come “really close.

“The lesson we’ve learned is to work even harder from now on,” he said. “This experience has also inspired us to rededicate ourselves to provide the voters with a greater voice in the political process.”

According to the Secretary of State’s office, Eyman turned in 266,006 signatures. To qualify for the ballot, only 41,126 could be rejected as invalid.

But after weeks of checking tens of thousands of signatures against computerized voter records, workers by Tuesday had rejected 42,772 signatures. Although they still have nearly 20,000 remaining to check, there’s now no way that the total will be enough for a spot on the ballot.

“He’s clearly had a terrible year,” Funk said of Eyman. “He raised about $400,000 from contributors to get measures on the ballot and failed to do it. If I was those contributors, I’d be taking a long hard look at why these measures failed.”

Eyman originally claimed that he’d turned in 300,353 signatures, which he and supporters had carefully tallied and weighed before being turned in. But the Secretary of State’s office said he’d only turned in 266,006.

Eyman called that “totally inconsistent with our records and totally inconsistent with various historical measurements.” He insisted that 35,000 voter signatures “were pilfered.”

State election officials blasted that allegation, saying that the forms are photocopied immediately upon receipt, guarded by a state trooper, and locked in a state vault when not being checked.

Funk’s take: that Eyman was merely trying to cover up the fact that he’d failed to get enough signatures.

“Tim throws gorilla dust,” he said.

Eyman on Thursday made no mention of the allegedly missing petition sheets. He said he and co-sponsors Mike and Jack Fagan of Spokane are “getting feedback from our supporters and evaluating what our 2007 initiative will be.”

Eyman rose to fame over the past decade as a feisty populist backing a slew of anti-tax measures. In nine years, he’s promoted 14 initiatives, including the popular I-695, which sharply pared back state taxes on vehicles.

Nine of those measures made it to the ballot; seven were approved by voters.

“It’s an amazing track record of success,” Eyman said in July, as he turned in his signatures for I-917.