People in Washington State are working hard to get people to vote against three proposals that will be on the ballot this fall.
Initiatives 2117 and 2124 would make it possible for Washingtonians to choose not to participate in the state’s required long-term care benefit program. Initiatives 2109 and 2124 would get rid of the state’s capital gains tax.
There are separate campaigns against each measure: “No on 2117,” “No on 2109,” and “No on 2124.” There is also a campaign called “Defend Washington” that fights all three.
A spokesman for Defend Washington, Sandeep Kaushik, says that new polling by the group shows that voters are likely to turn down all three proposals.
“That’s the kind of thing people don’t want to see happen in Washington state,” he told The Center Square. “Whether it’s money to protect our air and water, schools and early learning, or long-term care for workers and seniors.”
A poll that ran from April 11–14 used both phone and web questions. Defend Washington says that the poll’s selection of 600 likely Washington voters “came from a voter file.” Of these, 30% were conservative, 27% were liberal, and 38% were moderate.
Polls show that less than half of voters back all three measures; more people are against them than for them.
Less than a quarter of voters said they were “for sure” going to support each proposal.
“Even if people at first seem to support these, they know that the big cuts they would make are a huge problem,” Kaushik said.
Kaushik said, “Just because hundreds of thousands of voters signed petitions does not mean they are actually popular.” This was in response to the fact that huge numbers of people had signed petitions to get the proposals on the ballot.
He went on to say, “I mean, you can get signatures if you pay people to do it.” A man named Brian Heywood has spent a lot of his own money to put these measures on the vote. I wouldn’t use that to figure out where voters are in Washington, D.C., in general.
Heywood is the head of a hedge fund that paid for the proposals on the ballot through the group Let’s Go Washington, which supports voting rights.
Heywood told The Center Square earlier this week that polls around the company show that all three steps are likely to pass.
Heywood said that the fact that so many people bought their long-term care plans before the deadline to opt out of WA Cares, the state’s required plan, shows how unpopular the plan is.
“In Washington, 500,000 people got out, and then the state told everyone else, ‘You’re stuck in it forever, and you can’t get out,'” he said. “Part of what we want to say is that’s clearly unfair.”
There are more people who signed the petition in support of I-2124 than that number shows.
Heywood said, “You have 420,000 people who signed our petition saying I want out too.”
“They can use that as an excuse to say that this takes the place of long-term care, but it does not,” he said. “You only get help for two or three months, and then you’re done.” If someone thinks they might need long-term care and now thinks, “Oh, I have a state plan that covers that,” they’re going to be shocked.
Even though the Defend Washington poll results looked good, Kaushik says that nothing is being taken for granted.
“We think these measures are really destructive and will have negative impacts on Washington state, and we’re building a broad and growing coalition of opposition against these initiatives,” he added.
A spokeswoman for Let’s Go Washington, Hallie Balch, didn’t agree.
“The opposition can lie all they want, but the truth is that more than 800,000 people signed these bills, and 57% of them were Democrats and independents,” she said.People are tired of paying for programs that don’t work, which is why there is so much support. Because we care about the environment, schooling, and long-term care for seniors, we pay for these programs even though they haven’t done any of those things. “That’s crazy.”
