Seems every November in Washington state, Tim Eyman of the aptly named Voters Want More Choices has an initiative on the ballot that’s dramatically outspent by the powerful interests who dominate the state’s legislature.
And yet his initiative still wins.
In recent years, each January, as the legislature convenes, here come bills to “reform†the initiative process. Reform meaning kill.
This year’s bills seek to force citizens collecting petitions to register with the government and be licensed. Forget the fact that requiring a license to use one’s First Amendment rights is about as American as Joseph Stalin.
One bill makes sponsors of initiatives liable for any mistakes made by those petitioning. Better to scare away the citizen leaders. Mostly, the goal is to invalidate perfectly valid voter signatures on some technicality committed by the person circulating the measure.
The excuse for these bills, we’re told, is to fight fraud. But Washington’s Secretary of State, in response to a public records request, disclosed they “have no instances of verified forgeries or fraud in the signature gathering process for initiatives in those years (1999 through 2006).†That’s over eight million signatures with zero instances of fraud.
The real reason? The politicians and special interests that live off of our hard work won’t come out and say it, of course, but they figure that if they can’t win a vote of the people, then they’ll find a way to stop the people from voting at all.
That’s just wrong. It’s a fraud.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.