OLYMPIA—Sen. Patty Kuderer (D-Bellevue) spoke before the Washington State Senate today on her bill to remove the state’s requirement for advisory votes on revenue legislation, excoriating the ballot-cluttering remnant of an otherwise unconstitutional initiative that cost the state millions each election cycle and discourages people from voting.
“In a state that leads the nation in voting accessibility and election integrity, it baffles me that we still waste millions of dollars on a corrupt act of voter suppression like advisory votes,” said Kuderer.
“These non-binding, vote-imposters pollute our ballots with anti-tax propaganda specifically designed to instill distrust in government—and they do it on our most fundamental sanctuary of democracy, the ballot. They are fraudulent because they use loaded, misleading language, meant to push private interests and to influence rather than measure public opinion. We need real tools for making the Legislature’s work more transparent, not political rhetoric” said Kuderer. Senate Bill 5082, sponsored by Kuderer, makes information formerly presented by the clunky and ill-named system still readily available via QR code coupled with an online database, adding a layer of accountability and increasing the accuracy of the information portrayed.
“This means people can better understand where their money is going, how it is going to be spent. This is far more transparent and more accurate than advisory votes, which are neither advisory nor actual votes,” said Kuderer.
