Responsible Voters Guide The guide for Washington voters to vote responsibly

Welcome to the Responsible Voters Guide

The responsible voters guide is a new initiative to suggest people make the responsible choice when marking their ballot on or before election day. The difference between this and other WA voters guides is we don't follow any party lines or ideology, nor do we endorse any humans in the races. We have a team of experts in the back room who examine and scrutinize the legal, written policies of initiatives and ballot measures, and so they don't have much time to sit down with each individual candidate. In our opinion, when voting on an initiative you know exactly what you're getting, whether it be a tax increase, a law passing or being repealed, or a refinement of how our local democracy is structured. We find humans to be imprecise, emotional, and subject to be swayed by money.

Without further ado...

Lets get on with it.

Initiative Measure No. 1433: Vote NO to prevent Washington's cost of living from spiraling out of control, and the loss of jobs in low-cost areas of the state.

Seattle set a precedent, as the cost of living skyrockets in the Emerald City, to pass a $15 / hour minimum wage. However in 2016, Seattle's minimum wage still stands to have risen to only $10.50 - $13.00, with those whose wages were increased from $9.50 to $11 only seeing a median wage increase of $.73 due to the already-high costs of living in that area. Remember, Washington already has the highest minimum wage in the country, and it's inflation-adjusted to make sure that it's kept up-to-date with the larger economy. Passing this initiative ruins this process, and also makes it more difficult for people entering or re-entering the workforce to find transitional work to pull themselves out of unemployment. We need employer-paid sick leave, but it's wrapped up in an overly simplistic ballot measure that threatens to make our homelessness problem worse. Seattle's bold wage-increase plan only has a stark few data points and still remains largely untested - now is not the time to be gambling that this will work for the entire state, and thus it would be irresponsible to pass this measure.

Initiative Measure No. 1464: Vote NO to prevent sending an additional $660M in taxes every four years to WA politicians' campaigns instead of schools and infrastructure.

This initiative closes a large tax loophole that allows those visiting from out-of-state to not pay sales tax. This is a great tax loophole to close without raising taxes on any Washington state residents, but we shouldn't squander this money on a still-untested form of campaign financing - since Seattle passed this law in 2015, they still have yet to try it out, and so we have no data to prove that it removes "dark money" from politics. When Washington has big problems in so many areas that need funding, taking an untested program statewide is simply irresponsible.

Initiative Measure No. 1491: Vote YES to keep firearms away from extremely dangerous individuals, and a step toward an actual background check

This at first seems a bit irresponsible to allow the government control over your firearms, but digging into the text reveals it's not as bad as it may sound to the most die-hard 2nd-amendment voter. First it limits who may request the court order to family, household members, or law enforcement, the last which already have means to take away people's guns if they desire to act unscrupulously. Second it permits due process by accommodating a hearing in the process of obtaining the court owner BEFORE any confiscation happens. For those worried about its effect on mental health, the text specifies that a person with mental health issue must present a danger (so simply having ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, etc. is not enough to have guns taken away). Lastly, if passing this measure may save just one life, then it's the responsible thing to do.

Initiative Measure No. 1501: Vote NO to prevent meddling with WA's nation-leading Public Records Act to protect a special interest group

Initiative Measure No. 732: Vote YES to cut our dependence on dinosaur fuels and tax what hurts everyone, especially the poor (climate change and pollution), and reduce one of that nation's highest sales tax.

This measure has its shortcomings, but it's one of the few long-term revenue-neutral carbon taxes that have the proposition of going into effect in this decade - the legislature is too busy trying to fix our state's other Big Problems to be able to address the issue of climate change and carbon. However if this initiative passes, the legislature will be forced to act to fix this initiative's flaws, such as providing incentives for carbon sequestration, funding clean-energy enterprise and research, addressing the short-term revenue shortfall if this tax passes, and ensuring that the added gasoline tax will not disproportionately affect low-income residents who statistically have to drive further for work. This initiative isn't perfect, but it'll force the legislature to act , rather than allowing more years to pass with no address of climate change. It's a compromise between the right that doesn't want a carbon tax, and the left that wants a carbon tax that increases revenue, hence why those on the polar ends don't like it.

Initiative Measure No. 735: Vote YOUR CONSCIENCE because this initiative has no legal ramifications other than killing a few trees to print and mail the initiative to a bunch of federal officials.

You can vote YES on this to feel better about voting NO on I-1464. While Citizens United does, in theory, squelch the voice of individuals over those with large, deep pockets, the campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders support that candidates can rise to prominence without the need for large corporate donors, and a simple overturn of the 2010 Citizens United case doesn't solve what has been a century-long problem of big money dominating politics and politicians. Again, this discussion is moot, as this initiative has no legal effect.

Senate Joint Resolution No. 8210: Vote YES to speed up the redistricting of your legislative districts before the holidays distract everyone from the results.

Local Initiatives

We have included a few of the local issues people have asked us to include from regional elections.

King County Charter Amendment No. 1 - Nonpartisan Prosecuting Attorney: Vote YESto make one less elected official partisan.

King County Charter Amendment No. 2 - Gender-Neutral Language: Vote YOUR CONSCIENCE to change a really old document's text from using the terms "man/men" to "person" and "member".

This can be a distraction from the larger issues surrounding the King County charter - making the language gender neutral won't fix the wealth distribution, racial and gender inequality, transit access, and housing crisis, among other issues.

Sound Transit (A Regional Transit Authority) Proposition No. 1 Light-Rail, Commuter-Rail, and Bus Service Expansion: Vote APPROVED to get our share of Federal money, plus reduce commutes even for people that drive cars.

Yes, it's expensive. Yes, we should've done this in the 70s when the federal government would have footed most of the bill. But no, self-driving single-passenger and dozen-passenger buses will not solve this region's need to move tens of thousands of people per hour between our cities, and it won't get any cheaper if we say no and wait more years for another plan - it'll cost the same and we'll see less benefit - we'll end up like LA where they have stations planned to open in the 2060s.

Authors and Contributors

You can contribute to this guide if you can bring a thoughtful, reasoned argument in favor or against any of our stated positions. We too, as humans, are fallible and thus made have made an error or omission, or simple didn't do our research enough. Send us a PR or open an issue at Github

How to Vote

Having trouble with voting? Check out the excellent How to Vote In Washington video with all the links you'll need, which we've reproduced below. If you need more help or have a specific situation, you can call the State Department of Elections office at (360) 902-4180 and they’ll help you sort it out.