Mega-millionaire Brian Heywood and Let’s Go Washington may have gathered enough legally sufficient signatures to force the Secretary of State to process their IL26-001 and IL26-638 petitions, but Republicans are apparently not feeling confident about qualifying Jim Walsh’s voter cancellation initiative (IL26-126), judging by this headline from Mario Lotmore’s Lynnwood Times: “Republicans are in panic mode as initiative deadline approaches.”

Walsh has previously characterized that measure as being on track to qualify. But he hasn’t been putting out signature counts like Heywood and his spokesman have for the other two measures, which has been telling. Walsh’s spin has now been totally undercut by right wing operative Scott Pressler, who said in a clip posted to Twitter by right wing talk show host Ari Hoffman: “The voter ID initiative is likely to fail on Jan 2nd… My question to Washingtonians is, if you really want election integrity, why are we not getting the signatures?”

The answer to that question is that signature drives are logistically complex organizing endeavors that are rarely successful without paid labor. It doesn’t matter what a cause is or how much grassroots support it has: if people aren’t being paid to collect signatures, getting that cause on the ballot in the form of an initiative or referendum is going to be exceptionally difficult.

Brian Heywood learned this years ago. His initial attempt to put a slate of initiatives on the Washington ballot in 2022 ended in complete failure. Not a single measure qualified. The mass media and political observers only started taking him seriously after he opened his checkbook and began shelling out big sums for paid signature gathering in 2023.

By this time two years ago, Heywood had bought enough signatures to qualify six schemes to the 2024 Washington State Legislature.

For 2026, Heywood is going for just two, while Walsh tries to ride his coattails with IL26-126. Heywood has been happy to have petitions for IL26-126 at “super signing events” organized by Let’s Go Washington — many of them staged at public school gymnasiums — but evidently Heywood’s hired help is not being paid to carry the 126 petitions.

That means 126 is on the verge of failing — and right wing media personalities are worried about the optics. “The media will paint it as a failure, it’ll be harder for the next initiative & we’ll have given a gift to Democrats,” Hoffman groused on Elon Musk’s Twitter.

True on all counts.

That’s why attempting this initiative was a bad idea.

Shortly after Walsh announced it, we released polling showing that 60% of Washingtonians wanted Walsh and the state Republicans to abandon ship and ditch Walsh’s voter cancellation measure. Walsh did not listen. If he crashes and burns next week, it will be an inferno of his own making.

We expect Heywood will be submitting signatures IL26-001 and IL26-638, though there’s some nervousness on the part of his allies about the size of their cushion.

“The initiatives to [destroy the Safety Act and mandate invasive genital exams] in WA are close to getting enough signatures, but not quite there yet,” Republican State Representative Travis Couture wrote. “If you have signatures to send in, sending them by mail might not get there in time. Instead of the mail, the Let’s Go Washington website has drop off locations for signed petitions, and in some circumstances you can reach out and they’ll pick them up for you.”