July 23rd, 2023
Senate Bill 5082, prime sponsored by Senator Patty Kuderer, with a companion offered by Representative Amy Walen in the House, became the law of the land when our clocks changed over from July 22nd to July 23rd, 2023. Its title describes it as “an act relating to encouraging electoral participation and making ballots more meaningful by abolishing advisory votes.”
Keep readingJune 28th, 2023
For the first time since 2006, voters across the Evergreen State won’t see anything written by Eyman when they open their November general election ballot packets this autumn. That’s because Eyman’s “advisory votes” (which were really push polls), have now joined Eyman’s initiative factory in the dustbin of state history.
Keep readingApril 21st, 2023
Eyman, apparently unaware that Senate Bill 5082 had become session law the day before, sent out an email missive this morning headlined “Tell Inslee what you think. I ask you to send him an email now. Urge him to veto Senate Bill 5082.”
Keep readingApril 20th, 2023
On April 20th, 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed into law the Northwest Progressive Institute’s legislation to make it easier to vote in Washington State by replacing the anti-tax messages known as “advisory votes” with an online primer on the state’s finances that is accurate and truthful.
Keep readingApril 7th, 2023
Championed by Senator Patty Kuderer and Representative Amy Walen (both D-48th District: Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond), SB 5082 will liberate our ballots from what are really push polls… fake ballot measures created by Tim Eyman that interrupt the act of voting, saving taxpayers millions of dollars every year in ballot design, printing, and tabulation costs.
Keep readingFebruary 8th, 2023
Prime sponsored by Senator Patty Kuderer (D-48th District: Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond) for the fifth consecutive legislative session, SB 5082 would eliminate a barrier to voting in Washington by liberating our ballots from being polluted by Eyman’s propaganda (which Washingtonians are paying for), saving taxpayers millions of dollars every year in ballot design, printing, and tabulation costs.
Keep readingOctober 13th, 2022
Although the voter’s pamphlet statement says that statewide “advisory votes” in Washington are written by the Attorney General’s office, this is not accurate. Most of the wording is dictated by a statute that Tim Eyman wrote.
Keep readingAugust 27th, 2019
In less than a month, elections officials throughout Washington will mail out ballots to military and overseas voters, kicking off the November 2019 autumn general election in Washington State. This year, voters in every part of the state will see an unprecedented number of “advisory vote” measures on their ballots… three times as many as ever before.
Conceived by disgraced initiative promoter Tim Eyman, these measures masquerade as legitimate ballot measures when they are in fact a form of push poll, similar to the widely hated malicious telephone attack campaigns classified as a “DIRTY TRICK” by Safire’s Political Dictionary.
Our team at the Northwest Progressive Institute has prepared the following Q&A to provide answers to commonly asked questions about “advisory votes”.
We hope this discussion helps you make sense of this year’s ballot.
What are “advisory votes”?
Conceptually, an advisory vote is a nonbinding plebiscite… a kind of ballot measure that asks voters to weigh in and express an opinion on an issue, but which does not change public policy.
However, at the state level in Washington, “advisory votes” are actually a form of push poll concocted by disgraced initiative promoter Tim Eyman to load up Washingtonians’ ballots with anti-tax propaganda.
Why do you call the “advisory votes” push polls, and why do you put “advisory votes” in quotation marks?
We call “advisory votes” push polls because that is what they really are.
“Advisory votes” is not an accurate descriptor, so we put it in quotes.
A push poll is generally understood to be a type of campaign tactic that attempts to influence public opinion by pretending to measure it.
For example, a candidate who wants to undermine support for a rival might pay a political operative to call voters with a script that dishes dirt on the rival candidate and then asks the voter for their opinion of the rival candidate. The poll itself is meaningless; the question being asked suggests its own answer. Consider the following script:
John Doe is running for city council this year in Anytown, Washington. John Doe was recently caught speeding by our local police department and ticketed for going too fast in a school zone. John Doe’s neighbors have also complained that his animals are aggressive and a threat to kids playing in his neighborhood. The police have been called many times to John Doe’s home to deal with complaints made against him by his neighbors. Knowing these facts, are you more likely or less likely to support John Doe’s candidacy for city council?
Notice the script ends in a question, but any data resulting from question responses is totally worthless because it is preceded by information meant to bias the listener against John Doe. That’s actually not a problem for the poll’s creator, though, because the poll itself is a mechanism for the dissemination of information that could harm the prospects of John Doe.
The results are irrelevant… by design.
Eyman’s push polls work the same way. Their language and format was conceived by Eyman, and dictated by Initiative 960, which Eyman wrote.
Each push poll follows an identical format: highly misleading information is offered about a House and Senate action that raised state revenue (beginning with the words “The Legislature imposed, without a vote of the people…”), and then voters are asked to render a verdict on the tax increase by checking one of two ovals: “Repealed” or “Maintained”.
Voters are not told that regardless of how they vote, the law will not be changed. The only hint that they’re participating in a con is in the heading, which says “Advisory Vote”.
But don’t “advisory votes” still have some value, even if they’re not binding?
No. They don’t have any value whatsoever.
In fact, they have negative value: they waste tax dollars and confuse voters. Legislators can’t draw any conclusions from an “advisory vote” result, because the questions voters are being asked are not neutrally written.
Bad inputs produce bad outputs.
As a programmer working at Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, or countless other tech companies might say: garbage in, garbage out.
You wouldn’t consider a poll that contained negative information about one candidate and positive information about another as credible; it would not be deserving of a news story. Similarly, legislators cannot use any of the data produced by the “advisory votes” to inform their future decision making. The data is garbage. It simply cannot be relied upon.
Where did “advisory votes” come from? How’d we end up with them?
The RCW establishing “advisory votes” first came into being with the narrow passage of Eyman’s I-960 in 2007.
Initiative 960 was a measure that principally attempted to reinstate an unconstitutional scheme to require a two-thirds vote to raise revenue, in violation of Article II, Section 22 of the Washington State Constitution, which says that bills shall pass by majority vote.
“Advisory votes” are not a form of ballot measure provided for by the Washington State Constitution, so we believe they are likely unconstitutional, like that two-thirds vote requirement was.
The Constitution spells out three kinds of measures: initiatives, referenda, and constitutional amendments, all of which are binding.
The first “advisory votes” appeared on ballots seven years ago, at the 2012 general election. Although Eyman’s push polls date back to December of 2007, when I-960 initially went into effect (part of it would later be struck down as unconstitutional in League of Education Voters v. State of Washington), no one remembered that they existed until several years later… not even their creator Tim Eyman.
How many “advisory votes” have appeared on Washingtonians’ ballots to date?
There have been a total of nineteen, from 2012 through 2018.
And how many will voters see this year?
Twelve. That’s three times as many as voters have seen at once before.
There are so many Eyman push polls in 2019 that important local races for county, city, port, and school board positions will be pushed to the back of the ballot.
Why are there so many this year?
Because Eyman set up his push polls to be automatically triggered any time the Legislature takes an action that raises state revenue, and the Legislature this year did more to reform our tax code than in any other recent session.
The Legislature could have nixed this year’s crop of push polls by passing Senator Patty Kuderer’s SB 5224, as The Herald’s Jerry Cornfield recently explained.
The bill cleared the Senate, but it did not get out of the House due to opposition from former Speaker Frank Chopp.
The bill remains alive and we are working to pass it in the 2020 legislative session.
As part of its efforts to create a budget that could meet the state’s needs, the Legislature adopted a slew of bills that increased state revenue. For example, the Legislature adopted a more progressive real estate excise tax (REET) which replaces the old flat REET. The new REET is graduated, so will result in some Washingtonians paying less tax, but the passage of the bill nevertheless triggers an “advisory vote” because the new REET increases state revenue overall.
The twelve bills that are fodder for this year’s push polls are:
This list is available on the Secretary of State’s website. Each link goes to the text of the bill the Legislature approved.
Despite what Tim Eyman has claimed, these revenue reforms are pretty modest.
The taxpayers most affected by the Legislature’s actions are large corporations that can easily afford to pay more to support Washington’s public services, like the Wall Street banks that lost a lucrative tax break.
What else is on the statewide ballot this year?
There are three legitimate statewide measures that are binding (meaning, their outcomes will influence public policy).
Because fourteen of the fifteen measures appearing on the 2019 ballot are Eyman-related (SJR 8200 is the only one that isn’t), we’re calling it “the Eymallot”.
Are there costs associated with the presence of Eyman’s push polls on the ballot?
Yes. As The Herald of Everett recently reported:
In previous elections, each measure soaked up two pages in the voter pamphlet and the cost per page ranged between $12,000 and $15,000 depending on what else was in the pamphlet.
Final figures for this year won’t be known until September. If they’re in line with the past, these measures will require 24 pages at a cost of up to a half-million taxpayer dollars.
The costs associated with Eyman’s push polls go far beyond pages in the voter’s pamphlet statement, however. The push polls also increase the cost to Washington’s thirty-nine counties to print, send, and tabulate ballots. Quantifying these additional costs is neither simple nor easy, because the counties do not typically break down elections costs by jurisdiction and category.
However, in odd-numbered years, the counties do bill the State of Washington for state-level items, under an arrangement that dates back several decades. And in 2017, in most counties, the only state level items on the ballot were “advisory votes”, because there were no initiatives, referenda, or constitutional amendments on the ballot that year. That gives us a better idea of how much the “advisory votes” cost on their own.
As we explained to the editors and fellow readers of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, our research at the Northwest Progressive Institute found that Walla Walla County billed the state of Washington $11,438.52 for costs associated with the “advisory votes.” That was the bill for just one of the state’s thirty-nine counties in one year!
We have compiled a spreadsheet that documents the cost to the counties of the 2017 crop of “advisory votes”. It can be downloaded from Permanent Defense’s website.
Where can I find additional information about the “advisory votes”?
March 1st, 2019
This morning, the Washington State Senate adopted NPI-backed legislation to permanently abolish Tim Eyman’s push polls, which Eyman falsely calls advisory votes.
Senate Bill 5224, prime sponsored by Patty Kuderer, passed out of the Senate with bipartisan support.
Northwest Progressive Institute Founder and Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve issued the following statement following the vote.
“Congratulations to the Washington State Senate on the passage of Senate Bill 5224! For over half a decade, Washingtonians’ ballots have been burdened with the clutter of Tim Eyman’s push polls… anti-tax, anti-government propaganda falsely dressed up as plebiscites. Thankfully, we are now on the verge of getting rid of what has become an annual exercise in trickery and confusion. ‘Advisory votes’ are wasteful and deceptive. They are intended to shape public opinion, not measure it. Their very naming is dishonest. To ascertain where the public is on any issue, it’s vital to ask neutrally-worded questions. A question that suggests its own answer will not yield any useful data.”
In a presentation to the Senate State Government, Tribal Relations & Elections Committee one month ago, Villeneuve demonstrated how similar the advisory votes are to traditional telephone push polls, which are listed in the most recent version of Safire’s Political Dictionary under the entry DIRTY TRICKS. Not long after that hearing, the Committee voted unanimously to advance Senate Bill 5224, with all three Republicans voting aye.
Those same three Republicans joined most of the Senate’s Democratic members in voting for Senate Bill 5224, and were essential to the bill’s final passage.
“NPI is extremely grateful to Senators Hans Zeiger, Barbara Bailey, and Brad Hawkins for their votes in support of SB 5224,” said Villeneuve.
“These three Republican Senators listened to what we had to say in committee and then took a courageous vote twice to repeal Tim Eyman’s push polls, knowing full well that they were voting against Eyman’s wishes. They did the right thing instead of bowing to Eyman’s self-serving demands. This is what public service is supposed to be about: listening with an open mind and then voting for what’s in the best interest of our state.”
“We also want to thank Senator Patty Kuderer, who represents the Northwest Progressive Institute’s home legislative district, the 48th. Without Senator Kuderer’s leadership, this bill wouldn’t have been introduced, wouldn’t have earned a do pass recommendation, and wouldn’t have passed out of the State Senate today. NPI is honored to be represented by Senator Kuderer, and looks forward to continuing to work with her to raise Washington’s quality of life.”
January 24th, 2019
This morning, Tim Eyman sent out an email which claims that the Washington State Legislature has “recently imposed $24 billion in higher taxes”.
Don’t be fooled: These and other figures Eyman included in his email are misleading numbers that do not belong in anyone’s reporting.
The statistics Eyman sent are derived from the ten year projections that a Tim Eyman written law requires the Office of Financial Management to produce.
When Eyman says the numbers came from OFM, what he’s not telling you is that OFM only publishes these ten year revenue projections because they’re required to by self-serving language that Tim Eyman repeatedly put in his initiatives.
Here’s the provision that requires them (RCW 43.135.031):
For any bill introduced in either the house of representatives or the senate that raises taxes as defined by RCW 43.135.034 or increases fees, the office of financial management must expeditiously determine its cost to the taxpayers in its first ten years of imposition, must promptly and without delay report the results of its analysis by public press release via email to each member of the house of representatives, each member of the senate, the news media, and the public, and must post and maintain these releases on its web site. Any ten-year cost projection must include a year-by-year breakdown. For any bill containing more than one revenue source, a ten-year cost projection for each revenue source will be included along with the bill’s total ten-year cost projection. The press release shall include the names of the legislators, and their contact information, who are sponsors and cosponsors of the bill so they can provide information to, and answer questions from, the public.
And here is the page OFM maintains in compliance with that RCW.
According to OFM, there were three hundred and eight bills passed in the 2018 session. Just seventeen were classified as tax or fee bills. See OFM’s session summary page.
Eyman simply loves ten year projections because they have lots of zeroes in them. They’re big numbers. Take Eyman’s number for 2018… $13,384,000. That is the amount of revenue that Senate Bill 6269 (see text) was projected to generate over a ten year time period. In 2018, the amount of revenue generated was only $280,000. For 2019, the oil spill response tax authorized by Senate Bill 6269 is forecast to generate $1.37 million.
Anyone can play the game Eyman is playing here. It’s easy. Any amount sounds more impressive when you take it out over ten years.
For example, how much money will you make in the next ten years? Probably a lot more than you’ll make this year or the next two years. How much will your retirement account grow over the next ten years? Probably a lot more than the next one or two years (unless something really bad happens to the markets over the long term).
Budgets, however, are written for one or two years as opposed to ten years. Taxes are collected at the time of sale, or monthly, or quarterly, or annually, or bi-annually… not in ten year increments. Attempting to look ahead ten years (or further) can be useful as a planning or thought exercise, but that is not what Eyman is doing here. Instead, he is trying to deceive the public and press with misleading statistics.
Eyman has no interest in sound governance or long range planning. His objective has always been to wreck government so it can’t work the way it’s supposed to. He is a destroyer, not a builder.
There has never been a Tim Eyman initiative to address homelessness, clean up Puget Sound, spur economic development development in rural communities, or anything else worth doing to improve our state… and there probably never will be, because Tim Eyman is just not interested in strengthening our communities.
Eyman ascribes to the philosophy of Grover Norquist, who told NPR in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
From Tim Eyman’s email this morning:
In early 2013, the state supreme court reversed 20 years of judicial precedent and overturned the voters repeated decision to require the Legislature to pass another tax increase with a 2/3 vote.
What’s happened since then?
- In 2013, they did 5 tax increases costing us $ 877,500,000.
- In 2014, they did 2 tax increases costing us $ 26,201,000.
- In 2015, they did 4 tax increases costing us $ 5,173,000,000.
- In 2016, they did 2 tax increases costing us $ 2,000,000.
- In 2017, they did 3 tax increases costing us $17,600,000,000.
- In 2018, they did 1 tax increase costing us $ 13,384,000.
So WITHOUT the 2/3 rule, those 6 legislative sessions cost the taxpayers $23.692 billion (as calculated by OFM, the state’s budget office).
One final note: the State Supreme Court did not break with precedent when it struck down Eyman’s two-thirds scheme for revenue in 2013. Quite the opposite… the Court’s decision was entirely in keeping with its prior rulings, like the Gerberding decision. The Washington State Constitution is clear: bills pass the House and Senate by majority vote. Majority means greater than fifty percent: no more, and no less.
A supermajority is not a majority, just as a submajority is not a majority, because in either case, the outcome is in the hands of a few as opposed to the many.
Our Founders understood this, and that’s why they created Article II, Section 22.
Permanent Defense works to protect Washington by building a first line of defense against threats to the common wealth and Constitution of the Evergreen State — like Brian Heywood's initiative factory. Learn more.
