Sign-ins on state bills aren't scientific evidence of public opinion, but Republicans are obsessed with "winning" them

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anyway

This past weekend, Democratic State Senator Victoria Hunt of the 5th Legislative District received some unusual and unexpected news. Her name, she discovered, had been fraudulently entered — twice — into the legislative record for an upcoming House Finance Committee hearing in opposition to the the million-dollar earners tax legislation (SB 6346) that she had just voted for a few days before on the Senate floor.

And it turns out that Senator Hunt wasn’t the only one who had been impersonated: more than a hundred and thirty other union and nonprofit leaders’ names had also been maliciously entered into the record as opposed to SB 6346, including the Washington Education Association’s Larry Delaney and SEIU 775’s Sterling Harders.

“I was shocked to say the least, to learn that at 4:32 AM Thursday morning while I was home fast asleep, somebody apparently put my name and organization into the official testimony record as against the Millionaires Tax. I was even more appalled to learn that I wasn’t the only one that happened to over the weekend. We confirmed that at least a hundred people, including a former member of Congress, a current state senator, many leaders of SEIU 775, and other SEIU locals, were impersonated and their identities misused by someone providing false information to the state legislature in an effort to undermine and defeat the Millionaires Tax,” said SEIU 775’s Adam Glickman.

The identity of the individual(s) or entity responsible for these fraudulent submissions isn’t known at this time. But what we do know is that this is not the only problem with the list of sign-ins on Senate Bill 6346, which legislative Republicans keep improperly holding up as evidence that the public opposes the legislation. This is a list that is utterly plagued with irregularities. There are tens of thousands of duplicate names, there are the documented cases that I mentioned of fraudulent submissions, and there are indications that bots are responsible for a significant percentage of the sign-ins.

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2026/02/sign-ins-on-state-bills-arent-scientific-evidence-of-public-opinion-but-republicans-are-obsessed-with-winning-them-anyway.html