The Washington State constitution, Art. 2, sec. 1[1], contains an explicit direction that each “petition shall include the full text of the measure so proposed.” A state law[2] incorporating this requirement specifies that all petitions circulated for signatures must have “a readable, full, true, and correct copy of the proposed measure printed on the reverse side of the petition.”
The purpose is to fight fraud and misinformation by ensuring that all voters being asked to sign the initiative petition have the opportunity, at the time, to inform themselves and verify the details of the proposed law they are being called upon to support, but a recent decision by the Washington State Supreme Court regarding the latest gun control initiative in the Evergreen State calls into question the effectiveness of these laws.
The text of Initiative 1639[3] filed with the Washington secretary of state covers 30 pages. In addition to using a font tiny enough to shrink all 30 pages-worth of text to fit on a single page of the petition, the initiative sponsors neglected to use, in the petition provided to voters, the actual text of the initiative as it had been filed. Compounding this failure, the teeny text included in the petition lacked clear indications to actually show the changes – the very many changes – to the existing law proposed by Initiative 1639.
The NRA, the Second Amendment Foundation, and other gun rights supporters had raised I-1639’s noncompliance with mandatory state requirements governing initiatives in several[4]legal challenges[5].
On August 17, Thurston County Superior Court Judge James Dixon agreed[6] that the initiative petition did not meet the “readable, full, true, and correct copy” requirement and issued an order prohibiting I-1639 from appearing
