Spin Control: Initiatives to be absent from November ballot, again

Although Washington has long been a hot bed of direct democracy in the form of ballot measures that bypass or cancel legislative action, that trend may be on the decline.

This November, there will be just one statewide ballot measure, a proposed constitutional amendment on investing money, sent to voters by the Legislature.

There will be no initiatives forced onto the ballot by petitions signed by voters.

There will be no initiatives that got to voters after being sent to the Legislature, which lawmakers then ignored or rejected.

There will be no referendum in which the voters so dislike something the Legislature did that they want it thrown out.

This will be the fourth time in the past five years that no petition-backed measure has graced the state’s general election ballot. Except for last year – when three big-bucks measures rejected by the Legislature joined another pushed on the ballot by voters’ signatures – Washington has seen a sharp drop in ballot measures from earlier in the century, when as many as a half dozen proposals were decided in the general election.

There were no petition-driven ballot measures in 2023, 2022 or 2021, and a single referendum in 2020.

This is a significant change. In the previous decade, Washington voters legalized same-sex marriage and recreational marijuana and established charter schools – all in the same election. They’ve passed restrictions on taxes and guns, and approved tougher penalties for trafficking endangered species. Going back further, they were among the first to pass initiatives allowing for physician-assisted suicide and to legalize abortion before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade.

Also down dramatically this year are the number of initiative proposals filed with the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, which in some recent years could be counted in triple digits. In 2022, there were some 130 proposals for voter initiatives and 175 proposals for legislative initiatives. Two years earlier, there had been 122 proposals for voter initiatives and 219 proposals for legislative initiatives.

This year, there were 22 proposals for initiatives to the voters. They involved subjects including parental rights on school policies, repealing motor vehicle emission standards or gun restrictions, tax relief and “protecting girls sports.”

None gathered anywhere close to the required 308,911 valid voter signatures to bother turning them in for counting by the July 3 deadline.

Petitions for initiatives to the Legislature aren’t due until Jan. 2, but so far those proposals are also down. Since the 2025 Legislature adjourned and decamped from the Capitol, 22 proposals for legislative initiatives have been filed.

They include some of the same issues as the voters’ initiatives that went nowhere, such as parental rights, tax policy changes and “fairness in girls athletics”, some by the same sponsors. Also in the mix is a proposal, filed by Washington GOP Chairman Jim Walsh, to require voters to produce proof of citizenship. It’s similar to a bill introduced early in the 2025 legislative session that never received a hearing, and Walsh, who is also an Aberdeen legislator, is obviously not optimistic it will fare any better in the 2026 session.

Legislative initiatives have the advantage of becoming law in two ways. The Legislature can pass them in next year’s session. Or lawmakers can reject or ignore them, which puts them on the ballot in that year’s general election.

Once relatively rare, this two-pronged attack became more popular in the past decade or so from activists frustrated with a lack of legislative attention to their issues – or an adverse action on those issues. But they still need those 308,911 valid signatures to be more than just a proposal on file in the Secretary of State’s office.

Recent results for initiatives to the Legislature are mixed. After a big push for a six-pack of legislative initiatives on hot-button issues in 2023, last year’s Legislature passed three but ignored the other three more conservative initiatives. Those went to the ballot and were solidly defeated.

It’s possible the reduction in initiative filings is at least partly a result of Secretary of State Steve Hobbs changing the fee last year from $5 – an amount set when initiatives first became part of Washington’s political landscape in 1912 – to $156.

While it doesn’t keep people with a burning issue from filing – most successful petition campaigns spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to pay people to strong-arm signatures – it likely keeps down the gadflies and discourages people who have only a partly formed idea from filing multiple versions of their statutory language with slightly different verbiage to see which one can pass legal muster.

Most notable in this year’s relatively minuscule collection of voters’ initiative proposals: For the first time this century, none was sponsored by Tim Eyman, who once was responsible for scores of proposals each year as he sought issues that would excite his devoted followers enough to keep the checks coming to his campaign committee.

But Eyman, who has filed for bankruptcy and faces millions of dollars in fines, may be happy to leave the initiative game to others.

The ballot measure for 2025

Voters will be asked to approve a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to invest tax money collected for the state’s long-term care coverage, WA Cares, into the stock market. Right now, the state Constitution requires that money to be invested in less risky items like government bonds and certificates of deposits.

It’s one of those strange bedfellows issues. Writing the “vote yes” section of the state’s voters pamphlets for the general election (not the one that arrived in the mail last week) are Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson and Senate Republican Leader John Braun. Writing the “vote no” section are former Senate Republican Leader Mark Schoesler of Ritzville, a staunch conservative, and Democratic Sen. Bob Hasegawa of Seattle, one of the chamber’s most liberal members.