Frequently Asked Questions
- +Q: I live outside of King County, can I still sign the initiatives?
- Yes! All six petitions are statewide initiatives for all of Washington.
- +Q: Who is funding this initiative project?
- All contributions and expenditures to this effort are required to be reported to the Public Disclosure by law. See RCW 42.17A for the legal requirements. Go to pdc.wa.gov to see the details on this campaign, and all the other political campaigns in Washington state past and present.As you can see by the name of the PAC helping to promote these initiatives, it is called Let’s Go Washington, Sponsored by Brian Heywood. In addition to being a great name for a PAC, Brian Heywood’s name is listed as the prime sponsor because he is over 80% of the funding behind this effort. If you want to assist in funding this initiative effort you can do so by sending a check to the mailing address listed here:Let’s Go Washington, Sponsored by Brian Heywood16625 Redmond WaySuite M-PMB18Redmond, WA 98052Please make sure to identify your employer, or if you are retired, unemployed, etc for purposes of the Public Disclosure Commission.However, before you send the check, we would encourage you to grab a handful of initiative packets and go out and collect signatures first. We need roughly 400,000 signatures per initiative in order to qualify, and your help in collecting these signatures would be even more appreciated than a contribution.
- +Q: Who is eligible to sign these initiatives?
- Anyone who is a registered voter in Washington State (and for clarification for those registered multiple times in King County – you can still only sign each initiative one time) is eligible and legal to sign these initiatives.
If you recently moved to Washington State, make sure you register to vote, and you can also sign these initiatives.
- +Q: How many signatures do we need to get?
- The number of signatures is defined in state law and the Washington State Secretary of State publishes the specific requirements here:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/initiatives/faq.aspx
To be certified, petitions must:
- Contain the signatures of at least 324,516 registered voters.
- Be submitted no later than 5:00pm on December 29, 2023.
- However, it is wise and prudent to collect more signatures than “officially” needed because sometimes people will sign twice, purposely sign fake signatures, or people not eligible to sign will sign. It is generally recommended to collect 15-20% more signatures than what is officially required just to be safe. This is why we are targeting 405,000 signatures to allow for invalid signatures.
- +Q: Why are you collecting signatures for 6 initiatives? Wouldn't one have been hard enough?
- It isn’t easy. We know this is true. If you are out there engaged in this very significant effort to collect signatures, you know it takes time, work and a lot of volunteers to make this happen.
We learned a lot from the 11 initiative project last year and ultimately decided to focus on 6 very important issues this year.
- +Q: Why are the initiative packets stapled together?, wouldn't it be easier to have them in 6 different piles?
- Great question. Mostly, we tested out a few different methods and settled on this package option for a few basic reasons. First, we are attempting to encourage people to sign all 6, and it is just easier to have people start signing the first one and flipping a page and signing the next one, etc. In roughly 85% of the cases, people will sign all 6 if they sign the first one. Partly, this is because they are all great ideas, and partly this is just that once someone has committed to sign one, they only have to spend a few more minutes to make the complete impact of signing all 6.
Secondly, we know that some people will decide to not sign some of the initiatives. From an inventory control standpoint, we want to track these signature differences so that we can see which initiatives are more or less popular – and this will help us in scheduling our submission dates and it will be easier to identify which ones will need more education or promotion. From an inventory management perspective, this just makes sense and a few staples is a cost effective method of doing this.
Yes, before we submit the final signed sheets to the Secretary of State we will be sorting these individual sheets into their respective boxes and submitting by initiative number, but that is the last step in our inventory management process.
- +Q: If these initiatives are approved by the Washington State Legislature, are they really veto-proof?
- After the signatures for an initiative to the legislature are gathered and accepted by the Secretary of State’s office (and we have the required valid signatures needed to qualify), they will sent over to the legislature in the 2024 session starting in January.
When you actually dig into the details and minutia of the process, it actually takes about 30 days or 1/3 of the way into the session, for these initiatives to land on the legislative schedule where both houses can vote on them. Presuming we have a friendly legislature, which probably means a Republican majority, even if only by one vote, then it is presumably likely that both houses would vote to approve some or all of these initiatives.
If the legislature signs these initiatives (which can’t be changed, they can only be signed into law as is – or they go on the 2024 November ballot), then they become law without the Governor’s signature.
The Governor can’t veto these initiatives. They are veto proof, if the legislature of both houses approve them.
For more details, here is an AGO opinion which details the constitutional, historical, and legal reasoning behind why this is so:
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