From David Ammons, spokesperson for Secretary of State Sam Reed:

As part of the standard practice of doing an initial check of each and every petition sheet before the signature validation process begins, 20 petition sheets, all collected by the same gatherer, were identified. About 350 names, signatures and addresses are being investigated. The gatherer signed the back of each of the questioned petitions.

There’s no indication that I-1098 won’t make it onto the ballot even if this suspected fraud is proven to have taken place. Here’s why, again from Ammons:

The campaign submitted 385,061 signatures, not counting the questioned ones… It takes 241,153 valid signatures of registered Washington voters to secure a place on the November ballot.

In other words: an isolated incident, and always one of possible pitfalls of using paid signature gatherers.

UPDATE: Sandeep Kaushik, spokesperson for I-1098, writes:

We have zero tolerance for fraud and take this allegation very seriously. We had thousands of dedicated volunteers gathering signatures on I-1098. The Secretary of State’s office told us that 20 out of the nearly 25,000 petition sheets that we submitted, all collected by a single volunteer, are in question. We will be cooperating fully with the Secretary of State’s office to get to the bottom of this matter.

I’d note that the Secretary of State’s Office has made it clear to us that this appears to be an isolated incident that will not affect the overall certification process for I-1098, and they expect our initiative to be certified for the ballot by the end of this week.

FURTHER UPDATE: Kaushik writes to clarify my (apparently incorrect) assumption that this is all connected to a paid signature gatherer:

FYI, this is not a paid signature gathering issue, as your post suggests. These 20 questionable petitions sheets (out of nearly 25,000 that we submitted) appear to have come from a volunteer.

We are actually the only initiative to qualify for the ballot this year that had a significant grassroots component. We had more than 1,000 volunteers across the state who collected about 120,000 signatures in five weeks.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

4 replies on “Secretary of State Investigating Possible Fraud on Income Tax Initiative Signature Sheets”

  2. We already know from other states with ballot initiative and referendum processes that paid signature gatherers are a source of questionable signatures either through outright fraud or via misleading “bait and switch” tactics.

    Petition signatures collected by volunteers are usually held to be less suceptable to these problems. It’s good to see the diligence of the Secretary of State’s Elections Division illustrating that there are irregularities in *all* sources of petition signatures, even those traditionally held to be “clean”.

    This highlights the need for citizens to have transparency in this process, ensuring the integrity of the state’s elections through public access to petition signature records as articulated in the Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Doe v. Reed.

  4. The SEIU has confirmed that it one of their “volunteers”, a union organizer, who is under investigation. Read more at http://www.waledge.com … Dispatches from public radio’s correspondent at the Washington Legislature.

    To Brian Murphy … this is NOT oregon or other States … this is OUR WASHINGTON.

    Signature forgery on intitives here has been committed by non-paid volunteers. Union organizers, NOT the paid pros … who btw … get paid on only good signatures, get jobs based on the quality their work … and most of all … know better then to pick up a phone book and start writing down names.

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