After several years with no statewide initiatives, this year voters are being presented with four. This week The Impact looks at how initiatives have shaped state governance and influenced day to day life in Washington. Western Washington University Political science Professor Todd Donovan joins us for a Q&A session about a various topics including:
The sudden flood of initiatives this year
(Link) “There’ve been people trying and COVID really threw a wrench into things. That made it much more expensive to hire petitioners or even to do petitioning. Wages are going up, it’s harder the petition management firms to hire folks. So, this is kind of a surprise to see this, but I think there are also some efficiencies here. These were, I think the six total you mentioned, some of them are to the legislature and they were done as kind of a package deal. So they were able to have some efficiencies with being able to have the petitioners with bundles of these petitions at the same time,” said Donovan.
Initiatives, Voter Turnout, and Other Ballot Races
(Link) “Some research I’ve done with a few of our colleagues, particularly in midterm elections, I mean, you got a ceiling effect with presidential elections, there’s already high turnout, but there’s there’s, you know, particularly salient social moral issues are going to get a boost in turnout. But in those midterm elections where turnout is low, having 1 or 2 initiatives on the ballot, you’re talking maybe a couple percent increase in turnout,” said Donovan. “The parties play games or, you know, try to focus, test and figure out what’s the issue that’s going to get their folks to turnout. Democrats like minimum wage, Republicans maybe like some, other issues. But that’s really hard game to predict. Is that which voters are going to be mobilized? We know turnout is going to go up with, with with initiatives being on the ballot. It’s hard to say it’s going to go out because supporters of the initiative are being mobilized. Are opponents of the initiative being mobilized.
Effect of Initiative Fiscal Impact Statements
(Link) “That’s hard to tell right now. They’ve always kind of been buried in there. Maybe some fiscal information, fiscal note. But we do know from the surveys of voters over the years, voters here in Washington, that they queue off of the things that are most visible in the voters pamphlet, who’s signing the pro con statements? What’s the title in the summary?” said Donovan. “So it makes sense if you make a fiscal note more front and center, that’s easy information for people to queue off of. And when you start seeing big numbers like I-2117, the fiscal impact could be . . . it would make sense to think that’s going to have more impact than maybe in the past,” said Donovan.
Digital Signatures
(Link) “I don’t think any legislature in the country is going to go that way because ,first—the initiative is something that is removing control from the legislature and they’re the ones that write the rules about this. Unless you can do it through the initiative. But, to do something where you can do electronic petitioning, you lower the cost so much that a lot more stuff is going to be on the ballot so that’s a trade out.. What I think nationally we’re hearing more about is, in states where initiatives have been used recently to roll back some restrictions on abortion access, conservative legislators are looking at like we should make it harder to qualify initiative, s increase either the percentage that they need to be approved, increase the signature difficulty for petitioning for qualification or just getting rid of the process. So, most of the attempts legislatively in the last, I don’t know, ten, 20 years are more like restricting the process rather than opening up the process. But that’s… you know if you look at it through the lens of a legislator. They’re trying to keep their autonomy over legislation, and the initiative process is maybe a threat, if not an annoyance compared to that,” said Donovan.
Most significant laws passed through initiatives
(Link) “Policy wise, I think some of the most consequential things that have come out in the past few decades have been tax revenue things. And particularly the things that Tim Eyman has got on. And the policy consequences of like 695, 747, initiatives dealing with property taxes and issues dealing with car tab revenue, other votes on transportation that whether they survive court scrutiny or not, they’re sending signals to the legislature that kind of put the brakes on. You know, 695, the car tab thing, I think was thrown out by the court, but the legislature— it was so popular, the legislature has to pass it. Same thing with the property tax, the 1% cap on property tax increases. So those and just the threat of that dynamic out there changes how budgets are written, transportation budgets potentially as well, because the legislators have to be looking over their shoulder thinking, yeah. What what’ll happen if we put this tax forward?” said Donovan.