Initiatives: grassroots or astroturf democracy?

By Jim Simon
Seattle Times staff reporter

In 1973, a Ballard furniture salesman named Bruce Helm got so upset at a hefty pay raise lawmakers had voted themselves that he collected nearly 700,000 signatures in a three-week statewide blitz to undo the pay hike. So much money poured into the campaign, Helm started sending some back.

And in an election that fall, voters overwhelmingly canceled the pay raise.

You too can be like Helm. Can't think of your congressman's name? Wondering why all those guys and gals running for governor sound so much alike?

Why not take lawmaking into your own hands?

Not all states allow citizen initiatives. But in western states like Washington, where frontier populism was suspicious of the big logging and railroad interests that often controlled state legislatures, ballot-box lawmaking has a proud tradition.

Since the first initiative was filed in 1914, Washington citizens have voted directly on more than 120 proposals ranging from the frivolous to the national precedent-setting. Voters have revived the death penalty, overhauled the state's campaign finance laws, set term limits for members of Congress and the Legislature, and okayed -- over the objection of the butter lobby -- the sale of colored margarine.

The initiative pendulum has swung, like political life in general, from left to right in recent years.

A spate of liberal initiatives preserved abortion rights and rewrote tougher clean-up laws, while voters rejected a sales-tax increase for children's social programs and legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Then in recent years, conservatives have gone the initiative route to enact state spending limits and a tough "Three-Strikes-You're-Out" criminal sentencing law that became a national model.

Unlike the messiness of legislating, writing law by initiative is a black-and-white proposition, which is exactly what appeals to reformers. They can achieve at the ballot box what lawmakers can't -- or won't -- do inside the halls of the Legislature.

Or they can overturn the Legislature's handiwork -- seven times voters have rejected proposed constitutional amendments to establish a state income tax.

In the initiative procedure, it's a simple 'yes' or 'no.' The politicians can't procrastinate, cut backroom compromises, water things down or blame the other side. That's why clear-cut issues such as abortion or term limits -- rather than more complicated questions such as how to change the health care system -- lend themselves better to popular referendums.

How to do it

But turning an initiative into law is anything but easy.

Organizers must collect the signatures of more than 181,000 registered voters to win a place on the ballot. And some proposals are first filed as initiatives to the State Legislature. Only if legislators fail to approve them do they go to the ballot.

These days, initiative campaigns often resemble the "politics as usual" they propose to combat. Many campaigns have become big dollar affairs that use high-priced strategists and hire companies that pay people to gather signatures. And the initiatives often emerge not from the grassroots, but from some of the most powerful interest groups in Olympia.

In 1993, business groups drafted and spent more than a million dollars on what seemed-like a surefire initiative to roll back new taxes passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. But voters rejected it, in part because opponents stressed that much of the financial backing was from cigarette companies.

That same year, voters approved a measure that would put a limit on how much money would go into the state budget. That campaign had far less money and was heavily reliant on volunteers.

Last year, five Indian tribes spent more than $1 million trying to convince citizens to legalize slot machines -- an idea voters rejected by a nearly three-to-one margin.

For more on the history of initiatives in Washington state, check out an article published Oct. 21, 1993, in The Seattle Times.

Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company