Anti-Trans Signature Gatherers Show Up at Pride
http://www.thestranger.com/news/2016/06/29/24273325/anti-trans-signature-gatherers-show-up-at-pride
Signature Gatherers Are Being Told to Give People Few Details About Their Anti-Trans Ballot InitiativeAnd If They Tell You I-1515 Is a "Fair Vote for Coed Bathrooms," They're Lying.
by Sydney Brownstone
According to the online resource guide for Just Want Privacy signature gatherers, it's prudent to "say as little as possible about the details" of the initiative and not to mention any of the proposed anti-trans ballot measure's "controversial aspects."
The next bullet point suggests that signature gatherers "could even persuade people who do not totally agree with the initiative" to sign the petition by saying this: "Would you like to support an initiative that would allow the people of Washington to vote on privacy issues regarding women and children?"
The I-1515 campaign is being run by the same people who fought gay marriage in 2012, and the proposed ballot measure would repeal state human rights protections for transgender people in bathrooms and locker rooms. (The proposed ballot measure takes an additional step of mandating that K12 public schools have gender-segregated bathrooms, and then makes it legal for parents to sue public schools for allowing transgender students to use the gender-segregated bathrooms that don't correspond with the gender they were assigned at birth.) As written, there's little room to interpret the proposed measure as anything but a conservative attempt to legitimize fear of trans people.
But you wouldn't necessarily know these details from encountering an I-1515 signature gatherer in the wild.
As time ticks down to the July 8 deadline for Just Want Privacy to gather enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, reports have been trickling in about I-1515 signature gatherers allegedly using dubious methods to get people to sign. It's unclear how much of this is due to misinformed signature gatherers or the design of the signature-gathering process itself.