Money, support take ideas to polls

TACOMA, Wash. — The beauty of ballot initiatives is seductive and simple — all you need is $5 and an idea.

But the days of filing an initiative and sitting back while it catches fire in the public imagination are long gone. Getting an initiative on the ballot requires hard work and a whole lot of money.

State law demands 198,000 valid voter signatures to put an initiative on the ballot. Only about 14 percent of proposed initiatives make it.

“It is a treacherous, treacherous process that is not for the weak or the meek,” said anti-tax activist and frequent initiative sponsor Tim Eyman. “It’s like starting a company from scratch, and it has to be up and running and successful in three months.”

Initiatives fail to make the ballot for many reasons, but the most common fatal flaw is poverty. Running an initiative campaign is like running any kind of statewide campaign: you need money, the more the better.

“Raise a quarter-million and call me back,” is Sherry Bockwinkel’s standard response when a potential client calls her Tacoma signature-gathering company with an idea for an initiative.

“If you don’t have the wherewithal and the confidence you can raise a quarter-million dollars in six months to a year, it’s highly unlikely your campaign will make it to the ballot,” said Bockwinkel, founder and president of Washington Initiatives. Professional signature gatherers get 75 cents to $3 per signature.

Even initiatives that have broad popular support and willing volunteers use paid signature-gatherers if they can afford it. Otherwise it’s nearly impossible to reach the goal of 198,000 valid voter signatures — which really means about 260,000 raw signatures because many will be invalid.

Initiative signature gathering is not for the faint of heart or thin of skin. The job involves frequent rejection and occasional verbal abuse.

“I have horrendous turnover,” Bockwinkel said. “It’s a sales job, really, when you get down to it, and most of the world is not made of salespeople.”

Along with a fat bank account, it helps to have a statewide organization behind your initiative. Whether it’s a union like the Washington Education Association or a professional group like the Building Industry Association of Washington, initiative campaigns thrive on a structured, well-organized network of grass-roots volunteers and organizers.

Retired Bellingham teacher David Thurman learned that lesson when his initiative to give teachers more control over their pension fund failed to make the ballot in 2002.

A similar measure for firefighters and police officers easily made the ballot and passed that year. The difference was union support. Thurman had hoped the Washington Education Association would throw support behind his measure. The teacher’s union sympathized with the cause but couldn’t spare the resources in a tight budget year.

“No one came through … it’s a lot easier to pass initiatives when the economy is booming,” Thurman said. “I’m not disillusioned, but I’m certainly a lot wiser.”

When money and organization count so much in the initiative process, does the idea even matter? It certainly helps to have a popular one.

One of the last pure volunteer signature-gathering efforts was Eyman’s Initiative 695, which lowered the car-tab fee to $30. Without much money and with only a fledgling organization, the campaign got more than 500,000 people to sign I-695 petitions, the second-highest number in state history. The initiative passed in 1999 and launched Eyman’s political career.

Putting an initiative on the ballot will only get harder. State law says to get on the ballot you need a number of signatures equal to 8 percent of the votes cast in the most recent election for governor.

After the 1996 election, the law required 179,000 signatures. After 2000, the bar was raised to 198,000.

This year, a competitive and lively race for governor and a hot presidential showdown figure to drive monster turnout. The initiative signature-gathering requirement will likely increase by 20,000 or more.

Despite the odds, initiatives will always beckon like a lighthouse to idealistic souls tossed on the stormy waters of democracy.