Based on the past, initiatives stand even chance to pass

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter

Tired of all the rhetoric about Initiatives 601 and 602?

Getting dizzy trying to keep up with the claims and counterclaims of the latest attempt to give power to the people through the citizen initiative? Sit back, relax and take this initiative quiz. You'll find the answers below.

­ What was the first initiative passed by Washington voters? (A hint: It was in 1914.)

­ What initiative staked a claim to history for the late state Sen. A.L. "Slim" Rasmussen?

­ Which initiative holds the record for gathering the most petition signatures? (No, it's not Initiative 602.)

For eight decades Washington voters have taken to the streets, petitions in hand, to right the wrongs or change the laws their legislators either couldn't ­ or wouldn't ­ fix.

Most initiatives go no further than an idea ­ good, bad or flaky ­ floated by a discontented voter who took the time to try in vain to get some 200,000 signatures on petitions. Since 1914, the first year initiatives made the Washington ballot, 756 initiatives to the people and to the Legislature have been filed with the secretary of state's office. But only 113 have made the ballot.

Bad odds, to be sure.

But once an initiative qualifies for the ballot it has an even chance of being passed. Over the years, Washington voters have adopted 54 initiatives, rejected 53. Some have had a major impact, others none at all.

Law-by-initiative, this grass-roots method of overturning the status quo, has created folk heroes. It has created significant laws, such as revival of the death penalty and public disclosure of campaign financing. And it also has created headaches for the state attorney general, who must defend the initiatives' constitutionality.

That's sometimes a difficult task. Since the 1960s, when the secretary of state's office began keeping detailed information on initiatives, all or parts of five successful initiatives have been invalidated by state or federal courts. A sixth is being challenged in court.

Initiatives that have been declared unconstitutional, in whole or in part, include part of 276 dealing with campaign expenditures; 335, which tried to stamp out hard-core pornography but was deemed to trample on free speech; 350, which tried to prohibit mandatory school busing; 383, to ban the shipment of nonmedical nuclear waste to the state; and 394, which unsuccessfully sought to give voters increased control over spending by the Washington Public Power Supply System.

Threatened by constitutional questions is the term-limits initiative passed by voters last year. U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Spokane, and the League of Women Voters have filed suit seeking to overturn the law as it applies to Congress. If Initiatives 601 and 602 pass, state Attorney General Christine Gregoire says it may be up to the courts to figure out which of a half-dozen conflicting provisions in those measures would become law.

One reason for all those legal challenges ­ and for the uncertainty that a measure will actually remain state law even if it has the voters' blessing ­ is poor draftsmanship.

"Initiatives tend to be put forth by people who tend to see issues in black and white, unlike the legislative process, which is deliberative and compromising," says Ed Zuckerman, a political consultant who has worked on state initiative campaigns.

"People tend to write initiatives in nonlegislative terms. They get only one shot at writing the initiative. This is what makes defeating an initiative much easier than passing it." The state, by law, can't judge a measure's legality before it gets on the ballot. The notion of pretesting constitutionality comes up periodically, said Don Whiting, assistant secretary of state, but has never been seriously considered.

Even measures invalidated by the courts or defeated at the polls can have considerable weight:

• The anti-pornography law didn't survive from November until Christmas, but it is still referred to by legislators as a moral defining line, said Whiting.
• While the anti-nuclear waste measure was found illegal, sponsors say it prodded Congress to pass a law that required neighboring states to form interstate compacts for waste disposal.
• After years of debate, opponents of water fluoridation put an initiative on the 1976 ballot to make the fluoridation of public-water supplies illegal. The measure was defeated and the controversy fizzled (except in Everett, where it is on the ballot next month as a local proposition).

"Even when an issue fails it has an impact on the political process," said Whiting. "It clears the air."

That's not to say advocates give up. Voters rejected a bottle bill in 1970. Initiatives requiring bottle deposits surfaced again on ballots in 1979 and 1982 ­ and again were defeated.

Many initiatives begin with a strong tide of public favor, but lose their luster as the campaign season grinds on. Initiative 119, the 1991 measure that would have allowed physician-assisted suicide, had strong early support but failed at the polls. Still, half the measures that make the ballot in the state pass. Whiting credits that to the relatively tough hoops initiative sponsors must jump through to get a measure before voters.

By law, initiatives must bear valid signatures equaling at least 8 percent of the total votes cast in the last governor's race. Today that number is 181,667. Signatures can't be gathered until January and must be turned in by July.

Initiatives also need money ­ to print petitions, hire signature-gatherers, organize and get the message out. Whiting figures it costs at least $10,000 to get an initiative up and running. Nationally, about 70 percent of all ballot measures fail, said John Gorman, a Massachusetts-based pollster who specializes in initiatives and worked on Washington's abortion-rights measure in 1991.

"Initiatives do best when people feel frustrated that the legislative process hasn't done what people think it should have done," said Gorman. "Tax rollbacks show anger at legislatures that haven't been keeping spending under control. Term limits is a reaction against politics as usual."

In the past two decades Washington voters have considered 10 initiatives involving taxes and nine relating to the environment, by far the favorite topics of rebel voters.

Another thing history tells us is that voters are unpredictable. Polls and politicos may suggest what they think we want and we may throw all that prognostication back in their faces. Last year voters passed both initiatives on the ballot (term limits and one limiting campaign contributions); the year before they rejected all but one, abortion-rights, and that just squeaked through.

This gives no clue to the fate of the three measures on next month's ballot, the anti-tax Initiatives 601 and 602, and the tough-on-crime Initiative 593. Typical of emotional issues that affect life and taxes, all began in a wave of public enthusiasm. The question, then, is whether that enthusiasm has been sustained.

Michael Arno, owner of American Petition Consultants, a California firm that works to get issues on ballots, collected signatures for Initiative 602. He said he'd never had such an easy time filling petitions. People were even calling shopping malls to see if petitioners were stationed there. What makes this election unique, said Brett Bader, a local consultant who has worked on several initiative campaigns, is that all three initiatives are coming from the conservative side of the political fence.

"Initiatives to the people have generally come from the left. Whether it's pro-choice, children, the environment, toxics - they were all from liberal interest groups," said Bader, adding: "This year the liberals didn't have their act together. I wish we had a legislative election this year. What great defining issues these would be for candidates."

HERE ARE THE ANSWERS TO OUR INITIATIVE QUIZ:

• In 1914, voters passed Initiative 3, establishing statewide prohibition. Eighteen years later, voters repealed many of the state's liquor regulations with Initiative 61, and in 1948 by-the-drink liquor sales were made legal by Initiative 171.
• The late state Sen. A.L. "Slim" Rasmussen, a veteran, irrepressible lawmaker, staked his claim to fame in 1952 when he flogged the powerful dairy lobby and successfully pushed an initiative that allowed the sale of colored margarine. Unable to get the proposal through the Legislature, he took it to a sympathetic public. It passed overwhelmingly, even outpolling Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1952 presidential win.
• In 1973, a Ballard furniture salesman named Bruce Helm collected nearly 700,000 signatures in a three-week statewide blitz to undo a hefty pay raise lawmakers voted themselves at the end of the 1973 legislative session. So much money poured into the campaign, Helm started sending some back.
• Initiative 282, which passed handily even though ­ or maybe because ­ former Gov. Dan Evans dismissed it as "the whim of a furniture salesman," still holds the record for the most signatures gathered.
• A distant second is Initiative 602, which collected 440,000 signatures to secure a spot on the Nov. 2 ballot.

Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company