Washington state has a law pertaining to local initiatives, which says that when a voter signs the same petition twice, neither signature should be counted. Recently, a local initiative in the city of Vancouver was invalidated because of this law. The petition was 32 signatures short, but would easily have qualified if voters who had signed twice had not had both the signatures invalidated.

Proponents of the initiative sued in state court, and the case is pending. The County Auditor of Clark County, the main defendant, writes in this op-ed that the law is unjust, and he hopes it is overturned in court. The initiative was to block extension of Portland, Oregon’s light rail system into the city of Vancouver, via a new bridge over the Columbia River.