R-71 legal update: Challengers file new lawsuit to block vote
Washington Families Standing Together, the coalition supporting a newly adopted “everything but marriage” expansion of rights for state-registered domestic partners, has filed a fresh lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court to try to block a public vote this fall on the new law.
The organization and its chairwoman, Anne Levinson, challenged the validity of over 35,000 voter signatures accepted by the state Elections Division, and asked the court to direct the Secretary of State Sam Reed not to place Referendum 71 on the ballot.
On Wednesday, Secretary Reed certified the measure to the statewide ballot after a month-long signature check. Sponsors were found to have 122,007 valid signatures of Washington voters, a scant 1,430 signatures above the bare minimum.
The newest lawsuit raises the same issues that they had brought before King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector earlier in the week in an unsuccessful attempt to block the vote. Spector on Wednesday declined to stop the vote.
WFST took issue with election workers accepting over 35,000 signatures from petitions that did not bear the personal signature of the person who circulated the petition. The Elections Division has declined to reject such signatures, citing an attorney general’s opinion that says the Legislature has not clearly made it a legal requirement that each petition be signed in order for the voter signatures to be considered.
As in the King County case, the challengers also objected to the Secretary’s decision to accept signatures of people who registered to vote at the same time they signed the petition, rather than require that they already be on the voter rolls. Election officials accept valid signatures of people who are found on the voter rolls at the time of the check.
Judge Spector was sympathetic to the WFST arguments, but said she could not direct the Secretary to reject the questioned signatures. She noted that state law gives opponents a five-day window to file a case in Thurston County court, and that’s what happened Thursday afternoon.
In their proposed order, they said “Signatures of indiivduals who were not registered at the time the petition was signed cannot be knowningly accepted by the Secretary,” and said the 35,000-plus signatures without the circulator’s personal signature cannot be accepted.
The Attorney General will represent the Secretary and the Elections Division. No hearing has been set, but Reed has requested a speedy process, noting that the Sept. 10 deadline for the state Voters’ Pamphlet and for preparing ballots is fast approaching. Overseas and military ballots must go in the mail one month from today, and all other mail ballots must be mailed out by Oct. 16 and available at the elections counters by Oct. 14.
Unless the courts intervene, R-71 will ask voters to either approve or reject Senate Bill 5688, the new domestic-partnership law that is on hold until the referendum question is decided.
7 thoughts on “R-71 legal update: Challengers file new lawsuit to block vote”
Why can’t the law be followed? If the law was followed this would not be on the ballot and we wouldn’t be waisting tax payers money. The attorney general is not above the law either, just because they have an opinion doesn’t mean the SOS can overridge the written law.
Dave, Will you be posting all of the filings (motions, briefs, etc) in the new state court case as you’ve done with the federal court litigation and the King County state court case? Also, will you continue to post new developments in the federal court litigation?
Matthew– groups on the left and groups on the right have long been allowed to register folks who want to sign their petitions, but aren’t registered at the moment. the act of registration and signing the petition become simultaneous. the Legislature has long been aware of this practice and has not chosen to require the Secretary to turn aside these signatures. the courts have not ruled it out, either, as Judge Julie Spector did not this week. It’s a legitimate debate, but I don’t anticipate the lawmakers ending this policy, which allows interesting ballot measures to be the catalyst for some folks to get registered and participate.
J Scooter — yes, we will be posting all of the briefs, motions and decisions in the usual and acustomed places on our website. check the federal litigation page for the public records stuff and the state litigation page for the rest.
Is Judge Settle working for Protect Marriage Washington? It’s incredible that PUBLIC records continue to be sealed. Obviously it’s to benefit Protect Marriage Washington.
I cannot find anywhere where that the date of the signature is required on a referendum petition.
Was there a date column on the petitions?
If not, how do we tell if the voter was registered when they signed?
If I go to auditor and register to vote, or register with someone officially responsible to take registrations, do I have to wait until the Auditors office catches with a surge in registrations?
Is there not a date line on the Registration? Is not that considered the date of registration?
To Ron Armstrong,
WA does not require voters to put their dates of signature on petitions. Many states do requires a date of signature, some do not. HOWEVER, a key consideration when date of signature is not required is that there is a ‘double-layer’ of ‘protection’ that the voter was registered when s/he signed: (1) the voter is informed on the petition that if s/he “signs this petition when he or she is not a legal voter, or makes any false statement on this petition”, then s/he “may be punished by fine or imprisonment or both”; and (2) circulators must fill-in their names (and, in most states, swear or affirm) that they collected the signatures and did not knowingly accept signatures from persons not allowed to sign (i.e., unregistered voters). So, because BOTH the petition signer AND the circulator could be questioned in the event of a claim that the signer was not registered when s/he signed, a state would likely to able to find out — from two different people — when the circulator got the ‘voter’ to sign his/her name. The fact that the circulator could be identified has been deemed a critical component of preventing fraud from unregistered voters who sign — but are not registered when they sign.
In WA, the Attorney General — and the SoS — have pulled out the rug from this “double-layer” protection against fraud because they do not require the circulator’s name to be filled in. So there is no way, other than talking to the ‘voter’ who signed, to follow up with questions about what date that person actually signed. This is truly unheard of in the US in terms of state petitions — except in WA, either the date of signature has to be entered, AND/OR the name of the circulator who got the signature must be filled-in. That is why there is an excellent argument that the AG has wrongly interpreted the law regarding circulator’s names not having to be filled-in, and why Judge Spector said that the AG (and the SoS) has made “meaningless” the legislature’s directive that circulators fill-in their names.
J Scooter: the Secretary of State apparently is also not concerned that people who sign petitions more than once be prosecuted for fraud despite the warning they are liable to be fined or imprisoned. Certainly, there seems to be a complete disregard of election law here.
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