Today, as the deadline passed to submit signatures for 2026 initiatives to the Washington State Legislature, the Northwest Progressive Institute’s Permanent Defense project celebrated the demise of State Republican Party Chair Jim Walsh’s horrific mass voter cancellation initiative while vowing to continue helping Washington Families For Freedom build a strong, broad, effective opposition campaign to defeat mega-millionaire Brian Heywood’s slate of destructive initiatives targeting student safety and LGBTQ+ rights. 

Walsh admitted in a posting to Twitter late Friday afternoon that IL26-126 had insufficient signatures to qualify, after canceling his appointment to turn in signatures at 4:30 PM with the Secretary of State’s Elections Division office in Tumwater. The measure would have canceled the voter registrations of the majority of Washington’s five plus million registered voters who don’t have an enhanced driver’s license or enhanced state ID unless those millions of voters went in-person to a county auditor’s office before the November 2027 general election with very specific paperwork to “prove” their citizenship… like an “an original, certified birth certificate from a United States birth place, issued by a city, county, state, or territory, that contains… A registrar’s raised, embossed, impressed, or multicolored seal…” 

“The failure of IL26-126 is a victory for voting justice and good sense,” said NPI founder and executive director Andrew Villeneuve, who has been organizing opposition to right wing initiatives in Washington for nearly twenty-four years. “Our polling last year found that 60% of Washington voters wanted Jim Walsh to abandon his mass voter cancellation initiative after hearing his pitch for it and Washington State Democratic Party Chair Shasti Conrad’s case against it. While Walsh did not listen, he was unable to persuade enough people to jump on his voter suppression and disenfranchisement bandwagon to force a vote on this incredibly stupid and discriminatory idea. Good riddance to IL26-126!”

“As for Brian Heywood’s IL26-001 and IL26-638: We’re already hard at work building a campaign to defeat these divisive and incredibly destructive measures that seek to use Washington’s youth as pawns in the right wing’s ridiculous and vicious culture war.”

“Our constituencies and organizing community have a long track record of success against measures like these. Every time in recent history the right wing has attempted to exploit a social issue by forcing a statewide vote, we have shown that they are out of touch with public opinion. Since the new millennium began, they have tried to overturn civil unions and lost. They have tried to overturn marriage equality and lost. And they have tried to overturn comprehensive sexual health education and lost.”

“We’ve heard the right wing attribute their defeats to a lack of money, or tactical errors, or unfavorable electoral dynamics, but the truth is, they are losing because their extreme agenda is abhorrent to most Washington voters. Our coalition stands ready to unite Washingtonians behind our finest traditional values once again this November and send both of these measures to the dustbin, just like we did in 2024 with the three awful Heywood measures that sought to defund the Education Legacy Trust, repeal the Climate Commitment Act, and sabotage WA Cares.”