December 12, 2009 in Opinion

Government should keep its dark corners lit

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Sometimes citizens have to step in, and the formal agents of government have to step aside. That’s the spirit behind the Washington Constitution’s liberal provision for initiatives and referendums.

Earlier this year, for example, when elected state lawmakers finally afforded gay and lesbian couples rights that are roughly on a par with those that traditional married couples enjoy, disapproving citizens collected enough signatures to force the issue onto the ballot as Referendum 71. Ultimately, the voters passed the measure and validated the legislators’ work, but first a body of citizens got a second chance to put up a fight.

A better example of public activism happened more than 30 years ago, when citizens grew tired of government officials’ habit of doing much of their work out of public view. Thanks to those activists, Washington became a leader in the movement to guarantee public access to meetings, records and campaign finance details. It was a great victory for government accountability, but if we’d relied on government officials to shine a light on themselves, it would have been a long wait.

Now, sweet irony, there’s a serious threat that initiative and referendum organizers will be allowed to avoid the very openness that Initiative 276 forced upon unwilling government entities. On Jan. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to take up a case claiming that initiative and referendum petitions should not be public documents.

The issue arose during the Referendum 71 battle, when petition signers feared they could be exposed to threats or harassment if their names were made public.

State law says the completed petitions are public documents. A federal judge said they should be kept secret to protect signers’ anonymous political speech. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, saying there’s nothing anonymous about names that are collected in public, openly viewed by uncounted other signers and, ultimately, submitted to a canvassing process that involves observation by both proponents and opponents of the measure.

While we wait for the Supreme Court to decide if it will impair Washington residents’ ability to monitor this state’s lawmaking, one Seattle legislator has already prefiled a bill for next month’s legislative session in Olympia. Rep. Reuven Carlyle’s bill would affirm that the names, addresses and signatures of petition signers are public information.

That could be a ringing endorsement of Washington state’s commitment to openness and accountability, but it may not accomplish much else if the Supreme Court thinks it violates a First Amendment protection, thus raising a federal constitutional issue.

As it happens, one of those actively pushing for secrecy is initiative guru Tim Eyman, annual purveyor of Washington ballot initiatives. Eyman, of all people, should appreciate transparency in the lawmaking process.

Somehow we think Eyman has other motivations. In the interest of clean, open government in Washington, it’s more promising to count on the Supreme Court to see the flaws in his arguments.

Two comments on this story so far. Add yours!

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  gmorton on December 12 at 12:01 p.m.

  Openness and accountabilty are obligations of public officials, *not* voters. Those officials bear those obligations because they are presumed to be representing the voters. I.e., the voters (citizens) are the principals, the officials their agents. The principals are entitled to know what their agents are doing. The agents, on the other hand, are not entitled to know what their bosses, the citizens, are doing. Neither is one citizen entitled to know what other citizens are doing.

  The argument that petition signatures are viewed by “uncounted” others is nonsense. They are viewed by a very few others – far fewer than would view them should they be published in commercial media. And election officials who must view them to validate them are obliged not to disclose them to others.

  Ballot signatures should be secret for the same reason voting is secret.

  The Supreme Court has invalidated statutes and practices which had much less of a “chilling effect” on free speech than this misguided law. I’ll be amazed if it upholds the 9th Circuit.

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  dltooley on December 15 at 1:37 p.m.

  Like any Tim Eyman initiative this is certainly a subject worthy of consideration - however the more I think about it the more I think along the lines of gmorton - he says it better than I could.

  It would be okay to make names public in one situation only, with the explicit permission of the voter. Whether that’s worth the public money to do is another question, but at a low enough cost it would be an interesting comparative stat to have on each initiative, a way of a voter saying hell yeah, bring it on!