Eyman’s car-tab initiative falls short

Published 9:00 pm Friday, July 28, 2006

OLYMPIA – A $30 car tab initiative by Tim Eyman, Washington’s leading initiative promoter, on Friday failed to qualify for the ballot after a random test of his petitions, but the state will now do a full check.

It was Eyman’s second big setback this year. Earlier, he had failed to gather enough signatures to force a public vote on the new state law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination.

Secretary of State Sam Reed, the chief elections officer, announced that a check of about 11,000 randomly selected voter signatures showed an invalidation rate of 18 percent.

Eyman’s Initiative 917 could withstand an error rate of no more than about 15 percent, the office had calculated.

Reed said a full check of Eyman’s 266,006 signatures will begin after election crews complete random checks on three other potential ballot measures.

Those initiatives would repeal the state inheritance tax, expand property rights and require electric companies to use more alternative sources of energy. All submitted more signatures than Eyman and are expected to appear on the statewide ballot in November.

A subdued Eyman told supporters in an e-mail the development means “we won’t know until the end of September if I-917 qualifies for the ballot.” He said the error rate was “low (17.96 percent) but not low enough to automatically certify I-917 for the ballot.”

Earlier, Eyman had angrily accused the secretary of state’s office of misplacing, losing or deliberately destroying some 35,000 signatures.

Eyman insisted the campaign had submitted more than 300,000 signatures, as tracked in the campaign’s in-house records, and was mystified when Reed’s office counted only 266,006 names. Reed said all petitions are carefully and faithfully counted, and that he resented Eyman’s accusations.

In his e-mail Friday, Eyman didn’t mention his suspicions.

He said at least one initiative, I-655 in 1996, failed a random sampling, but eventually won a ballot position.

“We are hopeful the same will happen with I-917 so the voters will have the chance to approve $30 car tabs again.

Eyman, who was criticized in some newspaper editorial pages after his accusations against the elections office, was lambasted Friday by opponents of I-917.

“The dog ate his petitions – I don’t think so,” said Mark Funk, spokesman for the No on 917 campaign. “This is a political pie in Tim Eyman’s face.”

Funk said the opposition can’t assume the campaign is over.

“We will continue working as though this were on the ballot,” he said in an interview. “We think the $3 million (opposition campaign) would be better spent elsewhere. Not having to run a campaign would be a godsend for those groups that have been supporting our state’s transportation package.”

Eyman’s I-917 would repeal weight fees and other taxes passed by the 2005 Legislature as part of an $8.5 billion transportation package, as well as some local taxes, such as the Sound Transit regional vehicle tax. Eyman’s measure would remove an estimated $2.7 billion from state projects and revamp the way government calculates a car’s value for tax purposes.