4 Why we should submit Initiatives directly to the People

There are two kinds of Initiatives here in Washington state. These are called “Initiatives to the People” versus “Initiatives to the Legislature.” Currently both require gathering about 400,000 signatures. Once these signatures are gathered, Initiatives to the People go directly to the next General Election ballot. By contrast, Initiatives to the Legislature go first to the Legislature, where the Legislature can either vote to approve the Initiative or they can ignore the Initiative, in which case it automatically goes on the next General Election ballot. Crucially, if the Legislature votes to approve the Initiative, not only do they prevent it from going on the next General Election ballot but they also get the right to amend or gut the Initiative during their next legislative session. In this article, we will explain why it is better to file Initiatives to the People rather than Initiatives to the Legislature.

During the past two years, we all witnessed how submitting the 2023 Parents Rights Initiative to the Legislature was used by Democrats to mislead voters in the 2024 General Election into thinking they support Parents Rights - when in fact they oppose Parents Rights. The legislature then use the 2025 session to claim they were “improving Parents Rights” when in fact they were gutting the Parents Rights Initiative with House Bill 1296. It is a fact that parents, and parent friendly school board directors, have even fewer rights now than we had in 2023.

Yet despite this disastrous outcome for Parents Rights in 2025, some are advocating to submit yet another Parents Rights Initiatives to the Legislature in 2026. The benefit of putting Family Rights Initiatives directly to the People, rather than to the legislature, is not only to prevent our dishonest legislature from manipulating and deceiving the voters again – but to use our Initiatives to elect more pro-family candidates.

Two Bites at the Apple?
Some have claimed that it is better to submit Initiatives to the Legislature because we have two opportunities to get the policies turned into laws – either being passed by the legislature or being passed by the voters. But the truth is that submitting Initiatives directly to the voters rather than to the Legislature makes them twice as likely to become state law:

Here is a table of all of the Initiatives to the People from 2012 to 2024:

There have been 13 Initiatives to the People since 2012. 11 passed - but 3 of the 11 were later declared as violating various sections of our state constitution. Only 2 of the 13 Initiatives to the People failed to get a majority of votes in the General Election. So assuming we improve our ability to comply with the state constitution, the success rate would be about 11 out of 13 equals 85%.

Here is a table of all of the Initiatives to the Legislature from 2012 to 2024:

There have been 16 Initiatives to the Legislature since 2012. 4 were approved by the legislature. But 1 of those 4 was later rejected by the voters and another (the Parents Rights Initiative) was approved by the Legislature only to be gutted the next year by the Legislature. The remaining 12 all failed to be approved by the legislature. Of these 12, only 5 were approved by the voters in the General Election. The remaining 7 were not approved by either the Legislature or the voters. So the total success rate for Initiatives submitted to the Legislature was 2 plus 5 equals 7 out of 16 equals 44%.

Initiatives to the People during the past 12 years were twice as likely to pass as Initiatives to the Legislature. Why was this?
While there are lots of reasons why an Initiative may or may not pass, and we will cover some of these reasons in later articles, the most obvious reason is that once an Initiative is rejected by the legislature, the voters may become more hesitant to pass it due to the “bad press”. The voters defer to the wisdom of the legislature.

Learning from the 20 Let’s Go Washington Initiatives
Lets Go Washington is a Political Action Committee headed by Brian Heywood that started in the spring of 2022 when they announced a plan to use volunteers to gather signatures for 11 “Initiatives to the Legislature.”

Here is a table of their 11 Initiatives to the Legislature promoted by Let’s Go Washington:

Why did Lets Go Washington decide to submit eleven Initiatives to the Legislature instead of Initiatives to the People in 2022?
Here is a quote from the Let’s Go Washington website back in 2022:

“The kicker is that these are initiatives to the Legislature. So if they get enough signatures by December, and then are approved by that body next year, they could pass directly into law. Inslee would have no opportunity to veto them.”

Here are quotes from a Glen Morgan video of Jim Walsh posted on June 8, 2022 right at the beginning of the “Eleven Initiatives” campaign:

Jim: “So what we have been working on is a package of Initiatives to the Legislature that will really show the legislators and the governor what the people want in terms of policy in the state. But let's talk first about what is an initiative to the legislature. It's an alternate to the more well-known initiative to the people. If you think about the traditional initiative process, 30 dollar car tabs, those are Initiatives to the People. The mechanics of the two type of initiatives are similar in the early stages. You have to generate petitions and gather signatures of Washington voters in support of either type of initiative. “

“The difference starts when you've gathered enough signatures to qualify the initiative. The more traditional initiative qualifies and then goes on the next general election ballot. This year the deadline is in July and you'd have to collect 400 000 signatures and then it would go on the November 2022 election. That is an Initiative to the People. The Initiative to the Legislature goes a slightly different route. You still have to gather the same signatures in the same way but the deadline is the end of the calendar year versus the middle of the year. “

“If you gather the signatures by that time, then the initiative goes to the legislature and gets voted on by the state house and the state senate and then if they both approve it, it becomes law without the governor's signature and is not subject to the governor's veto. That's a big deal right now because if the Republicans are able to get control of both the house and the senate, one of the arguments activists have told me is there's no point in voting for republicans because even if they get in there, he's going to veto whatever they send them. “

“This provides at least in theory if you had some really good initiative ideas that people cared about and handed them to the legislature in January of 2023, presumably with a Republican majority in both houses that they could sign into law, he could not veto them they would become law. If the legislature doesn't approve of the initiative, it then goes like the other initiative to the people for a vote - but not until the 2023 general election. So there is still a backstop. “

Unfortunately, despite having several extra months during 2022 to gather signatures for their 11 Initiatives to the 2023 Legislature, none of the 11 Initiatives were able to gather the 400,000 needed signatures.

2023: The number of Initiatives to the Legislature is reduced from 11 to six

On July 18, 2023, Glen Morgan interviewed Heywood. Here’s a quote:

“There's a couple of ways to do initiatives. One is an Initiative to the People. That's got a very short window to qualify and then it goes immediately on the ballot. I'm not doing that. The second is an Initiative to the Legislature - so we have until the end of December to collect signatures and then it goes to the legislature in January. If there's enough pain or enough heat, the legislature could sign it in January and it becomes law. The benefit of doing it to the legislature is you get two bites at the Apple. If the legislature ignores it and says we don't really like this one, or we're going to ignore what the people think, it automatically goes on the ballot next year. So we either get it to the legislature or we'll get it on the ballot and everyone will be able to vote for it in 2024.”

While Heywood initially tried to use volunteer signature gatherers, by August, 2023, he changed his mind and contracted with a couple of commercial signature gathering companies – paying them millions of dollars to gather signatures. By the end of 2023, he had spent nearly $8 million to get enough signatures for all 6 Initiatives to the Legislature:

The 2024 legislature passed three of the Initiatives. These were the Parents Rights Initiative 2081, the Police Pursuit Initiative 2113 and the No Income Tax Initiative 2111. This meant that the other three were automatically placed on the 2024 General Election Ballot (along with the Protect Natural Gas Initiative 2066 to the People). Here was the result:

Initiative 2066 (to the People) passed with 51.7%

Initiative 2109 (to the Legislature) failed with 35.9%

Initiative 2117 (to the Legislature) failed with 38%

Initiative 2124 (to the Legislature) failed with 44.5%

Opponents of these Initiatives outspent supporters by $50 million to $10 million. So that was one reason they were defeated. There was also the problem with misleading Titles. But the real problem was the lying legacy media prevented voters from learning the truth about these Initiatives – which is why we need a statewide network of Community News websites set up before submitting our Family Rights Initiatives to the People.

Despite the failures of the Initiatives to the Legislature in 2024, in June 2025, Heywood announced he would promote three more more initiatives to the Legislature in 2025. These new Initiatives hope to create a new school choice funding program, restore fairness to girls sports and repeal the Legislature’s recent changes to the Parents Rights law. We will the serious legal problems with these Initiatives in a later article. But hopefully this article has explained why we should not submit any more Initiatives to the Legislature on any topic.