A lawsuit challenging the certification of Initiative 1000 has been filed in Thurston County Superior Court by Kan Qiu, president of American Coalition for Equality (ACE), and two other members of the organization. I-1000 intends to bring back race-based discrimination, which has been banned since 1998 when nearly 59 percent of voters in Washington state voted to pass Initiative 200.
The legal action names Secretary of State Kim Wyman as a defendant.
“The sponsors of I-1000 attached a sticker altering the front of the different initiative petitions after the petitions were signed and before turning them in as supporting I-1000. The Secretary of State wrongly counted the signatures on those different initiative petitions as valid signatures in support of I-1000,” Qiu said.
He added, “We can’t allow the Secretary of State to set this bad precedent and rock the foundation of our initiative process.”
According to the filed court documents, there are other issues ranging from questionable signatures, to the validity of their sampling practice.