Protect WA’s initiative process from dark money corruption

Brian Heywood and his MAGA allies are flooding Washington Legislators’ inboxes in a tactic to stop our lawmakers from passing protections that would keep the far-right from continuing to run dangerous and misleading initiatives.

Senate Bill 5382 would reduce initiative fraud by requiring the Secretary of State to verify petition signers’ signatures and addresses to ensure that they are registered voters as required by law.

Let’s remind lawmakers what we learned last fall and prove just how unpopular Heywood’s agenda is!

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Subject: Vote Yes on SB 5382 to protect the integrity of our initiative process

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I’m writing to urge you to support Senate Bill 5382, and protect our initiative process against the corruption of big money-fueled signature fraud. SB 5382 is a commonsense bill that will make Washington’s initiative process more secure and trustworthy. Right now, our system has two major loopholes that weaken public confidence:

Currently there is no enforcement of the requirement that petition signers must be registered voters. Petition signatures are validated without a voter registration address. Without this basic safeguard, paid signature gatherers can earn large sums of money by turning in fraudulent and ineligible signatures, including people who aren’t eligible to vote or don’t even live in Washington. Many other states already require a registration address to verify that signatures come from real, registered voters.

Additionally, signature gatherers often fail to sign the declaration that, to the best of their knowledge, the signatures they collected are valid. This means there is no ability to track systematic mistakes or outright fraud. Since most gatherers are paid workers—most from out of state—there’s no way to track whether they personally witnessed signatures or ensured signers were eligible voters. At least 22 states, including Arizona, Colorado, and Florida, require sworn declarations from signature gatherers. Washington should meet this same standard.

SB 5382 fixes both of these problems by requiring signature gatherers to sign the declarations on the petitions they are circulating, and by requiring address verification during the signature validation process. Adding these safeguards is crucial to ensuring every counted signature is legitimate.

The people of Washington have the right to propose and reject laws through ballot measures. To uphold the integrity of this process, we must safeguard against fraud and mistakes in signature gathering.This bill is about protecting our ballot initiative system from fraud and mistakes. I urge you to support SB 5382 to uphold the integrity of our initiative process.

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