UPDATED ON 1/12/11. Updates last paragraph to change suggested number of voter signatures for sponsors to submit …. If it’s the second Monday in January, it must mean one thing: Tim Eyman is filing another initiative with the Office of Secretary of State. (Oh, by the way, the Legislature began its 2011 session at noon Monday.) Eyman wasted little time jumping on Monday’s official kickoff to initiative filing season. Joined by his initiative partners Mike and Jack Fagan, Eyman held…
(UPDATED AT 12:25 p.m., Nov. 19 to show Eyman has dropped his state lawsuit.) Protect Marriage Washington, gay-marriage opponents who sponsored a public vote on the state’s new domestic partnership law last November, have been given a May 31 trial date for their effort to ban public release of the 138,000 names of people who signed Referendum 71 petitions. In the meantime, the names will remain sealed, under a ruling from the bench this week by U.S. District Judge Benjamin…
More dire news for the state Legislature and Governor Gregoire: The multibillion-dollar budget hole has gotten about $1.2 billion worse. Washington’s projected deficit is now calculated at well over $5 billion. The state’s anemic economy and the huge budget gap will dominate the upcoming legislative session, and Sen. Joe Zarelli and other lawmakers are urging that an emergency session be held next month to get a head start on more cuts. The governor already has ordered across-the-board cuts of over…
“Election Day” is history now, but in Washington, it’s just the beginning. The count goes on … and on. The Election Night report from our 39 counties showed us a great snapshot — about 60 percent of the 2.4 million expected ballots were tallied. The rest, either still in the mail or in the courthouses awaiting the time-consuming process of scrutinizing each ballot, will be added over the coming days. Most counties will be adding freshly processed ballots daily, and…
The Office of Secretary of State has begun the process of releasing copies of petitions for about a dozen initiatives, most sponsored by initiative activist Tim Eyman. Thurston County Superior Court Judge Richard Hicks on Friday lifted his previous ban on releasing initiative and referendum petitions under the state’s voter-approved Public Records Act. The Secretary of State’s public records officer, Brenda Galarza, on Tuesday began making arrangements with individuals who had requested the petitions submitted for 11 initiatives in earlier…
Judge Richard Hicks of Thurston County Superior Court has just lifted the ban on releasing initiative petitions under the state’s Public Records Act. His decision does not allow release of Referendum 71 petitions, however, since those are still the focus of a federal lawsuit brought by foes of same-sex marriage, and the federal judge has released a ban on release at this point. State Elections Director Nick Handy said petitions will be released as soon as possible, and that he…
The use of the initiative and referendum process ebbs and flows from year to year, seeming to track the economy and whether interest groups believe Olympia is attentive to their issues. This year is one of those high-watermark years, with a record 75 initiatives to the people filed and six headed for a statewide vote after meeting the significant signature requirement. According to a new tally from the state Elections Division Thursday, 2,230,902 signatures were submitted this year in support…
Protect Marriage Washington, gay-marriage opponents who forced a public vote on the state’s new domestic partnership law last November, are heading back to court to try to ban public release of the 138,000 names of people who signed Referendum 71 petitions. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a case called Doe v. Reed, ruled 8-1 on June 24 that, as a general matter, release of petitions does not violate voters’ constitutional rights. But the court also left open the possibility of…
Initiative activist Tim Eyman and his partners will again appear on the Washington state ballot this year. Their Initiative 1053, making it harder for Olympia to raise taxes, cleared its last major hurdle on Monday when the state Elections Division announced that the sponsors submitted enough voter signatures to make the November ballot. I-1053 became the fourth initiative to qualify for the ballot, and two others are widely expected to qualify, too. That would equal the modern record set in…
It’s a bumper crop of initiatives apparently headed to the fall ballot. On Friday, the deadline day for submitting petitions, three more campaigns brought in hundreds of thousands of signatures. This brought to six the number of initiatives to the people for the year, tying the modern record set in 2000. The all-time record was the seven on the 1914 ballot, almost a century ago, the first year we could use the initiative and referendum process. Sponsors of two anti-tax…