BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today raised serious new concerns about the validity of Initiative 1639, the gun control measure now gathering signatures, because petitions do not appear to meet state-mandated guidelines for having a “full, true, and correct copy of the proposed measure” printed on the back.
Having already raised the issue of readability as required by state law, the two organizations now believe that in its printed form on the back of each petition, I-1639 does not meet the “full, true and correct” requirement. SAF and CCRKBA examined the printed text on an official petition and discovered that language designated to be changed or removed is not “lined out,” nor are proposed new statutory additions underlined as they appear in the version submitted to the state and published on the Secretary of State’s website.
“We warned earlier this week that the tiny print on I-1639 petitions makes the document unreadable according to several people who have contacted us,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “If you look closely, which requires a magnifying glass, this new problem becomes obvious.
“We immediately advised our attorney about this,” he added. “He already reached out to the initiative sponsors about the readability issue, but they didn’t respond. If they are so careless about knowing what is, or is not, shown on their own petitions, how is anyone else supposed to know?
“They’re asking people to sign an initiative that is difficult, if not impossible to read,” Gottlieb observed. “And now we’ve discovered that even if people can read the fine print, it does not appear to be a ‘true and correct copy’ of the proposed measure as submitted to the state.
“What are voters supposed to think about this,” he wondered. “How are they supposed to know what they’re being asked to change? How can they tell the difference between what would become law, and what would be replaced? Are they simply expected to sign a document they can’t read and vote on a measure they don’t understand? That’s not democracy, that’s Trojan Horse politics.
“If these petitions, which are not compliant with state law, are turned in,” Gottlieb vowed, “our organizations will seek to have them invalidated by the court.”