-Welcome to "City Inside/Out."
I'm your host, Brian Callanan.
Democrats in Olympia are pushing a bill
they say will prevent fraud and big money
from influencing our state's initiative process.
But opponents say the measure would simply
make it more difficult for average people
to exercise their right to get a measure in front of voters.
-We believe this bill is about integrity.
-Supporters of Senate Bill 5973 want to change
Washington State's initiative process,
stopping the practice of paying canvassers
on a per signature basis,
and trying to keep big money interests
from buying their way onto your ballot.
-The way the initiative system in Washington state
is currently set up allows millionaires and billionaires
to prey on working people.
[ People cheer ]
-Thank you guys for coming out.
-The measure would make it tougher
for multimillionaire Brian Heywood
to file initiatives,
as he's done over the past three years,
to push back on majority Democrats.
-But in addition... -I'm against 5973.
-...current and past Secretaries of State say
5973's new requirement
of providing 1,000 signatures upfront --
to prove voter interest -- would burden anyone
trying to file an initiative or referendum.
What they say amounts to voter suppression.
-It's an attempt to make it even more difficult
for citizens to participate in their government process.
-If 5973 passes, how would it affect voters statewide?
-Even great systems have room for improvement.
-Our panelists weigh in.
-This is a solution in search of a problem.
-Is 5973 a necessary reform or an initiative killer?
That's next on "City Inside/Out."
♪♪
And joining us to discuss this issue we have with us,
Damiana Merryweather, who is the deputy director
of Fuse Washington, a non-profit political coalition
that supports Senate Bill 5973.
-Damiana, good to have you here. -Thank you for having me.
-We also have with us Brian Heywood,
founder of Let's Go Washington, in opposition to this measure.
Let's go Washington, a political organization
very much at the center of this debate.
-Brian, great to have you back. -Great to be back here.
-And let's talk about this,
Damiana, I'll give you a first shot here,
Give us an overview about
why the state of Washington needs Senate Bill 5973.
-Absolutely.
Our coalition supports this legislation for a couple of --
well, for one basic reason,
which is that we really want to
return integrity to the initiative process
and really return the initiative process to the people.
And it does two basic things --
one is to eliminate the bounty-style payment
on signatures that are gathered by paid signature gatherers,
and the other is to reduce the rate
of frivolous initiative filings.
We want everyone who has real business
and wants to bring that before the public
to be able to get on the ballot.
But right now, the process is being --
we believe the process is being manipulated in a way
that is actually hindering that.
-Okay. Thank you for that.
Brian, give us an overview about why you oppose this measure.
-This is a solution in search of a problem.
Secretary of State Hobbs --
not a fan of Let's Go Washington --
came out and testified strongly against this,
saying that they already have
a very solid verification process.
There is no fraud.
In fact, when I looked up fraud during the testimony,
one of the SEIU speakers on it --
-Union folks. Yeah.
-One of the public union people said,
"Hey, we know that fraud can occur
because we got caught doing fraud."
So I was like, "Oh, what fraud did they get caught doing?"
And I looked it up and it was one of
they're paid by the hour signature gatherers
that was convicted of 19 counts of fraud.
And there's been no allegation whatsoever that anything
that we've done or anything that's happened in recent memory
has involved any fraud.
We had one of the highest verification rates recently,
so I really think this is looking to put hurdles in place
so that it makes it more difficult to run an initiative.
-Okay.
Can I put a pin in that fraud question just for a second?
-It's an important one. -It's very important.
-And I know you have an important point there,
but I do want to break down some of these different pieces
and let me run the train here for a second.
I just want to talk about some of the things
5973 would actually do if it's passed.
So, Brian, I'll start with you here.
So there would be a ban on paying signature gatherers --
gatherers, I should say, on a per signature basis.
These are the people who helped qualify
an initiative for a ballot there.
You've got Senate Democrats saying,
"If you're paying by the signature,
that really incentivizes fraud,
and you've got ten states around the country
that do have a ban like this in place
with these paid signature gatherers
on a per signature basis.
So why not here in Washington?
Why not pay these gatherers by the hour instead?"
-Well, first of all, it's a union tactic, right?
This is what they do.
First you get people paid by the hour
and then you unionize them and then you do training required.
I can see the bills that are going to come down this in the next three years.
Training that can only be done by a union representative.
And so it's a way for the union to take control of the process.
Number two, the fraud that happened here
was paid by the hour, not paid by the signature.
And I just was speaking this morning in Utah,
there's a fraud that just happened with
500 or more fraudulent signatures that's going on.
I called the county clerk there
who found and discovered the fraud.
And in Utah, they pay by the hour.
So paying by the signature versus paying by the hour.
The evidence so far doesn't seem to indicate in any way
that paying by the signature is going to be -- in fact,
so far, the evidence would say that paying by the signature
seems to be doing better than paying by the hour,
because what they were doing with the hourly rate
was they were then taking the time to write down --
they were just making up addresses
that were at the end of the street,
or they were taking voter rolls
and they were writing it in.
And I think that we have a process already
with Steve Hobbs and with the Secretary of State
that's verifying the signatures,
that's designed there to capture fraud.
The other piece that we as an organization,
there's no way I'm going to pay for signatures
that aren't with a high level of veracity.
So we scan in every single thing
that comes in and run it against --
I can't match the signatures, but I can run it against
names and birth dates in the voter rolls.
So there's a huge incentive for me
to not pay for fraud if I'm paying for it.
-Okay. Got it.
Damiana, just some response here to this whole concept of fraud.
-Well, in addition to the examples
that are provided in the supporting information
for the bill itself, in which there have been
documented cases of fraud
that were directly linked to paid --
-Paid by the signature.
-...Paid by the signature in Washington state.
We also have a trove of body of evidence
from across a multitude of states
where they have found fraud, convicted people of fraud,
and where those people who have been convicted
have explicitly indicated, "Well, if I get paid
by the signature, like, why would I not turn in
as many signatures as I possibly can?
And if I need to, you know, make them up,
then that's -- it's a logical thing."
Let me use a real life example to give a context for it.
So in 2024,
Mr. Heywood's organization, Let's Go Washington,
circulated six initiatives at the same time, right?
-Right. Mm-hmm.
-So they would send their circulators out not with one,
but with six.
Now, if I'm getting paid $5 per signature
and I can get someone to sign all six of them,
that one signature is now worth $30 to me.
Now, if I can duplicate that through whatever means,
through coercion, through aggressive tactics,
through misrepresenting what they say,
or through "Oh, somebody signed one.
Well, let's make sure -- add it to these other ones."
Those are all -- like, it's kind of common sense.
If they are worth that much money to a person who's willing.
Now, I'm not saying
all signature gatherers are unscrupulous.
-That's far from it. -Okay.
-But a person who is inclined to be
would have a high incentive in that circumstance.
-Let me push back a little bit here,
because you've got former Secretary of State Sam Reed
saying in a public hearing where
Secretary of State Hobbs spoke as well.
He said, and I'll quote here,
"If you're doing this because you think there's fraud,
frankly, you're wrong.
If there have been issues of fraud,
the Secretary of State's office
says it's responded to that,
thrown out signatures, corrected those issues."
I guess it comes to that question is,
"Why does our state really need a ban like this?
Is fraud that widespread?"
-You know, I want to stipulate,
I believe in our initiative system,
and we believe that the Secretary of State's office
does their best to only qualify good initiatives.
But there's both the past Secretary of State
and the Secretary of State are invested in defending the system
that they operate, right?
-It's for the state. Right.
-For the state and investing the public's confidence in that,
and we're not interested in that.
But I think any person who tells you a system is perfect --
-Mm.
-...even great systems have room for improvement.
And to insist that there's just no opportunity
to make even a good system work better,
sort of defies credulity.
-Brian, let's keep going down this path, if we could.
And I want to refer to these six initiatives
that we're talking about here.
Let's Go Washington gathered signatures for six initiatives.
Three were passed by the legislature.
Three were on the ballot in 2024.
To qualify for the ballot,
each measure needs about 309,000 signatures in our state,
which are gathered within the span of a few months.
To be safe, you need closer to 400,000 here.
So the whole logic goes, it's a lot of signatures
to gather in a short amount of time.
There were some people who testified that have said,
"It's like a high-speed sales pitch,"
often with some of these signature gatherers.
I just want to make sure I finish up this thought --
the critique that paying people per signature invites fraud.
-Paying people by the hour also equally invites fraud.
You give someone a lot of money and lots of time,
they can do whatever they want.
So I think it's really a completely specious argument.
If there was evidence in our state,
and I particularly would ask you,
are you saying that we've done fraud?
I'm asking you very directly,
do you think that what we did was fraudulent?
-I am not accusing you of fraud.
-I am saying that this system --
-You think it can happen. But it didn't.
-...is prone to it. and invites that opportunity.
-Within our systems -- Secretary of State --
we just had an 86% veracity rate on all the signatures,
which is extremely high in this state
compared to any other initiative.
It's at the very high end.
So one, there's no evidence
of this even happening in our state right now.
It's a solution in search of a problem.
And I would go back to --
let's talk about the pay per hour.
-Mm-hmm.
If you've ever worked on a job where there's a union, right.
What's the thing -- I was told I was on a construction job
when I was a kid, and I was told --
I was just working hard because my dad said, "You work hard."
And when I did, the union guys all said,
"Stop, you're going way too fast.
You're going to cause us all problems."
And that in the initiative, in the signature --
When you're getting paid by the hour,
there's zero incentive to do it.
And I think that's part of the process here.
We're in a blue state where one party controls it.
And in a in a red state -- the Republicans in Idaho
are trying to shut down the initiative process.
In this blue state where the Democrats have complete control,
they're trying to shut down the initiative process.
And part of that would be to make it
so that you're way less efficient.
And certainly paying by hour is a great way to
dramatically drop the productivity.
-One last point on this, Damiana.
Yes. You had something you wanted to add?
-Oh, I lost my train of thought.
I mean, it is kind of amazing
that Mr. Heywood really is fixated on the horror of unions.
And the plague that they cause, which --
-Public unions, they certainly do cause a plague.
-Different opinions on this one, for sure.
Okay. All right.
Maybe I'll put a pin at that point.
Maybe I can move to this different point.
Brian, let me start with you here.
You brought up during your testimony
on this issue a couple of weeks ago,
passing 5973 could have a chilling effect
on other people trying to pass initiatives in the future,
whatever those measures might be.
What are your concerns there?
-It's on the back end where they're saying, "Well,
someone's got to sign the back end," right?
For most of the paid signature gatherers
that's happening anyway, that's not a big deal.
It's really in the volunteers.
And I'll give you an example of what happens.
So you go to an event and there's maybe --
there's sort of two issues where this comes up.
You go to an event and there's 1,000 people there
and you've got 30 clipboards.
First of all, who's going to sign it?
Who's the person that's responsible?
Because people are just coming up at all different times
and they're signing.
And so the thing causes -- the bill says
there's like a $5,000 penalty and up to like 364 days in jail.
-Okay.
-And the person on the back has to verify
that everything is correct on the front end.
So who's going to be the one that does that
when you've got chain of custody
is almost impossible in one of those events to corral.
So are you going to be the one that says,
"Oh, I'll sign when I don't know
every single thing that's on there."
When we already have a process in place
with the Secretary of State to verify things,
I'm going to scan them in myself.
So if I went to an event and everything was wrong,
I'm not going to turn them in
because it doesn't do me any good.
The second is,
I've got 75-year-old ladies that take up --
we mail them, they'll say, "Hey, give me that,
and I'm going to go knock on my neighbor's doors
and send it to them."
And if you said to her, "Oh, if you get it wrong
or if someone is wrong on it, there's a potential,"
and this is what the rumor mill --
it will go around and it will completely chill
the volunteer effort because they'll be afraid.
I don't know what the state's going to do,
and I don't know how they're going to prosecute me
and this state -- we have a governor
and a former AG that's very venal
in the way that he's prosecuted people.
So I think there's a huge fear
that the state is going to hurt me,
this little citizen just trying to do my thing.
-Okay. -How is this going to affect me?
-Got it. Damiana, a response.
-In the first example, I hear Mr. Heywood saying
that he actually isn't exercising
due diligence in collecting signatures.
Due diligence is to make sure
that when you offer someone an initiative,
you say, "Hey, are you a registered voter?"
-Yeah. -Right?
It's a basic question that everyone should be asked
before they're asked to sign.
-If he is -- -Let me correct you.
We do ask for people on that.
We don't -- and we make it very clear.
-But that's not the example you just gave.
-No, no, it is, in a place -- -I have a dozen out.
And thousands of people and no one supervising them.
-And there's a reason that they suggest that you get more
because there will be people that will say, "Oh,
yeah, I'm registered," or people that don't,
and I don't have any way to verify it on the spot.
-Right.
-I think the point was just to bring it back,
I think it was the idea that this measure,
if it does pass, could be chilling
for those initiative signature gatherers.
Meaning I don't want to do this if I'm going to break the law.
Things along those lines.
-Well, I mean, the attestation requirement,
which is not in 5973, to be clear,
it's in 2260, so a separate bill.
But that attestation requirement --
So on the back of every initiative sheet
there's an attestation that says I followed the law
when I collected these signatures.
That's all -- I mean, it's a legal --
-No, that's not all it does. It threatens them.
It threatens them with a year in jail.
-It says that there's a penalty if you break --
-If it's not done properly. -If you break the law.
-If someone writes it -- so someone could come in.
-No, it does not make me require to verify
that the person signed is being honest,
It says I follow the rules, which is, I ask you --
-That's not that's not entirely true.
-Okay. -That is, it is.
And so what we're asking is that
if you're collecting signatures
in that bill, which is a separate bill,
that you sign the attestation,
which is required to be printed for a reason, right?
There's a reason the Secretary of State
requires that, which is to say, yeah,
which hopefully would mean
that people who are collecting signatures
are being given the guidance
to actually collect them correctly,
to fill out the sheets right,
to ask the basic question, "Are you a registered voter?"
-Okay.
-That actually, we think, would promote a higher quality
of collection if there was that due diligence.
-We just had 86% validity on all of our signatures, right.
There is not a problem here.
You're projecting something that doesn't exist,
and you're pretending that it might happen
because fraud happened before when the SEIU was collecting it.
-Okay. Last point, quickly, please.
-The reality is, right now,
when no one signs those petitions that collected them,
there's literally no way to link
the sheet that was collected
with the person who collected it.
Which means if in their review, the Secretary of State
finds what looks like a pattern of honest error, right?
Could be just a person who makes the same mistake over and over
because they don't know better or possible fraud.
There is no way to link those sheets to each other
or to the person who collected them.
And that is a huge, huge opportunity for people
who have ill intent to do so,
or for people to make mistakes
and not have the opportunity to correct them
because we can track them down.
-Okay there's -- -Briefly, Brian.
-If someone wanted to disrupt things
and we've got -- I know that there's agitators
that come in to our events and try to disrupt things.
So if someone wanted to try to get someone,
they could go in and fraudulently sign on purpose,
right, with a fake name and whatever.
And then the person that's got to
verify the end, they don't know.
And you said honest error,
which is absolutely what happens and can happen, right?
If you've got honest error,
but there's this penalty that you might go to jail.
You're going to tell me that you think
the 75-year-old woman is going to understand
the subtle nuance of whether or not
this is going to be accepted by the state,
or whether I could possibly --
There's no way.
She's going to be terrified of doing something --
-I feel like if you spend $8 million
to put six initiatives on the ballot,
maybe you could spend a little bit of time
helping educate those people who are collecting --
-You go ahead. When you go and spend your own money,
when you use the union money,
when you spend millions of dollars of union money to do it,
you guys don't get it right
when you guys get your union money.
And we're doing a much higher voracity than already.
We're doing it, right?
You're accusing us of something that's not occurring.
-Brian, let me jump in here because I think Damiana
is going down a path that I'd like to bring up here.
I think it was brought up during the public hearings too,
the idea that our current initiative process enables
wealthy interests, and Mr. Heywood was mentioned
by name here to buy their way onto their ballots.
How do you think 5973, if it's passed,
answers that concern, because wealthy individuals
have been a part of funding behind initiatives
in our state for many years.
-Oh, absolutely.
And I don't think any person
or organization who supports this bill
thinks it would block anyone from participating.
In fact, that's not our interest.
We want everyone to participate.
But if you look at the number of filings
that have been done to the Secretary of State
for potential initiatives in the last three years,
that's 382.
Mr. Heywood and his compatriots are responsible for 300 of them.
To me, that does not say that the initiative process
is really empowering the general public.
It says that it's being used by a very select group
to advance their own agendas, regardless of
whether or not those are really representative
of the broad public.
I think people want to think -- want to see things
on their ballot that really belong there,
not that represent a very specific
ideological agenda that is bankrolled
by a small group of people.
-I think your logic is completely discombobulated.
You said this 300 number,
I don't know where you came up with that
-because you said all -- -The Secretary of State.
-Well, but you said our compatriots,
I don't know who you're including in that,
but the only ones that go on the ballot
are a very select few, right?
Already we've got an attorney general's office
that gets to write the ballot title,
and we've conflated a whole bunch of issues here.
We've got the ballot title itself,
and we've got who's funding it.
We want to talk about funding first.
The WGA and the SEIU spent enormous amounts of money
on fighting what gets on the ballot.
And when they didn't have control for a few years,
they were spending enormous money
to get stuff on the ballot.
Now there's complete and total control by one party.
The initiative process was designed to give some voice
to people that are not in the power structure
to be able to address it.
And in this state it used to take, in fact,
what I've done is taken a huge amount of money
out of the process.
It used to cost $20 per signature
for the paid signature gatherers.
I've got that down. It's not five.
I've got it down to three. Right?
And a much lower number
that allows us to get people out in front of --
people out in Okanogan and Cowlitz
and all over the state that normally don't get to
even be in part of the process.
They don't even get their voices heard.
So number one is just getting that out there.
If you think that you can buy your way in the ballot,
you have no idea of what it takes
to get the signatures gathered,
because you've got to convince people to stop
when they're sending activists screaming at people,
and they've got to have the courage
to write their name down when there's people yelling at them.
That's not an easy process. They have to believe in it.
-Can I jump back with you?
Because 5973 just in terms of what this bill does,
it would also add a step in the front end
of the initiative process.
The person filing the initiative not only
would have to fill out paperwork, pay a fee -- $156,
but also submit the signatures of 1,000 registered voters
as a show of support for the initiative they're filing.
You got other states like Oregon and Ohio,
I should say that have a similar requirement.
Why not implement that in our state?
-So I think that would be a fantastic idea
if we also required it for every law
that every legislator proposed as well.
I would 100% support it.
-I'm not going to disagree with you on that.
-Okay, okay.
-If we would do that
because I think there's like 3,000 bills that get filed.
-Right.
-And that's way, way more than what goes on in the initiatives.
-Yeah, might slow down
our representative form of government --
-But I'm all for slowing it down.
Do less, faster would be --
But I think there's another piece which is
the bill is so poorly written in the hearings
there were people that were asserting,
"Oh well, those would count towards
the ultimate signature count."
That's what they were asserting.
Then when the question was asked by the guy
that wrote the bill, it became clear.
It's not really clear that's going to be the case.
And part of that is because --
-But it has been amended. -Okay, fair enough.
-But even then it's still -- what's the title?
There's no title on it yet,
and I guarantee you there will be challenges.
To me, this is sort of a trap.
Okay, you go do this.
"Oh," and then I can see Pacifica Law is going to come in
and they're going to do a lawsuit
because the title you did there is not the title
that's ultimately here, and you didn't get the title
and you couldn't even qualify it.
So the Secretary of State hasn't registered on...
the there will be this bureaucratic process
and the process is the punishment.
It's a process designed to slow it down or destroy it
and make it almost impossible.
-Damiana, some thoughts about this
1,000 signature requirement.
-When they passed this law in Oregon,
in response to a very similar dynamic,
what they saw -- since 2009,
so they've had a nice long period of time
to see it actually happen --
is no reduction in the average number of initiatives
that make it to the ballot, but a 75% reduction
in the frivolous filings at the front end.
-Right, right.
-So it really did solve the problem.
So Mr. Heywood pointed out,
all of that work is to get just a few initiatives on the ballot.
And my point is, exactly.
So let's take the two initiatives
that his organization is currently circulating.
That's a really great, very current example.
So they've got two initiatives
that they're currently circulating.
They filed 20 versions
in order to find two titles
to put them on, to circulate them.
-Okay.
-That frivolous use of public resources.
-Why? Why? Explain why that's frivolous.
-Why do you need to file the same --
-Why is it frivolous? -Why do you need --
-Why is it frivilous?
-Well, because each one of those that you filed,
which are substantially the same to each other,
then each require the attorney General's office
to do a full review
and draft a full independent title
that's different than all the other titles.
And so the trick here is you file a bunch of things
that are substantially the same with minor differences.
So then you get a menu of titles to choose from,
and you choose the one that you've pulled
and is going to be the most favorable to your position.
-I can give you 30 seconds here. Brian, please.
-The Attorney General has the full authority
to write whatever the heck they want.
And the attorney general comes out afterwards and says,
"We don't support this initiative."
So we have someone that's opposed the initiative,
that's writing the titles.
That is completely, completely unfair process.
So if we --
and also secondly, we're doing different versions
because there's different legal ideas and different ways
to attack it, to attack the law,
there's not always a straightforward way.
And then third, what happened to us this last year
was particularly interesting because the code revisers
usually are very unpartisan,
and they take care of the bill right away.
But on the Parents Rights initiative,
they didn't file the revised code clear until almost August.
We had to go at it 3 or 4 different ways
because they were changing the code
as we were trying to get it.
So anything that we submitted,
if the code's not solidified and we submit an initiative
and then it changes, then this initiative is no longer valid.
I can't even collect signatures on it.
There's a whole game that's playing
and you pretend like it's not.
But the legislative bureaucracy behind it
is playing a game to make it difficult and hard to file,
so you have to fight back.
-Thank you. I appreciate all of this.
We do need to wrap up.
Damiana, if you could,
what do you want lawmakers to be considering
as they're looking at Senate Bill 5973?
-We need to return the initiative process
to the people so that it actually gives
regular folks and grassroots movements
the opportunity to put issues
of shared value and importance on the ballot.
Right now, it is being dominated
by a very small number
of incredibly wealthy individuals,
one of whom is Mr. Heywood,
who are driving agenda
and driving their own personal values and priorities
through what is supposed to be a public process.
-I can give you 45 seconds, Brian.
-It's so rich to hear someone who takes a union money
to do all their stuff.
The unions drive the agenda in this state.
They raise hundreds of millions of dollars.
They're the biggest political spenders in the entire state.
They have driven a ton of initiatives through.
Now they have complete and total control of the legislature.
And so here's someone trying
to give the most grassroots thing possible.
The initiative is the most grassroots thing possible.
I have to get 400,000 plus people to sign their name
that they support this idea, and if they don't,
I won't collect the signatures.
It won't happen.
There's other initiatives that try.
If you don't have the support, it won't happen.
So I think that the legislature is trying desperately
to solve a problem that doesn't exist,
and they're wasting everybody's time,
and they're doing this instead of
even looking at the initiatives.
To me it's like example A,
they should be looking at the two initiatives
we put in front of them.
Instead, they're trying to make it harder
to get them on the ballot.
-Thank you both for this, and we will be right back.
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Good to have those opinions.
Also good to be Brian Heywood
and Damiana Merryweather.
Very much appreciate you being here.
-Thank you so much. -Thank you. Great to be here.
And Damiana, I appreciate you spending the time
and exchanging opinions.
-I appreciate it. Thank you.
-All right. There we go. I'm Brian Callanan.
See you next time on "City/Inside Out."
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