Margarine, Prohibition and other initiative oddities in Washington state

As opponents gather signatures to overturn the same-sex marriage law, a local historian says Washington is no stranger to initiatives.

“It all started in the 1890’s when people really mistrusted government. They thought the banks, railroad, and lumber industries were running everything,” Feliks Banel explained to 97.3 KIRO FM’s Seattle Morning News.

He said people really began to embrace creating legislation that people could vote on. In fact, Washington state was seven years ahead of the rest of the country on Prohibition in 1914, the first initiative we ever passed.

And just like in 1912 when the initiative system really kicked off, it still only costs a citizen $5 to file.

“We’re in the top five of the number of initiatives that are filed,” Banel said of the accessibility of the process.

According to Banel, the Secretary of State has a great list of all the initiatives that have ever been filed. Some say ‘No signature submitted’ because people just submit them as a way to bring an initiative forward.

While filing an initiative may seem like a great idea, to get it on a ballot you’ll need enough money to pay signature gatherers to garner support. Banel admits the process may change a bit if it begins to include online signatures.

Interestingly, Banel says a quick search for ‘Tim Eyman’ in the initiative list will result in 74 entries.

Our state’s initiatives offer an interesting glimpse into our local history. Banel says his favorite initiatives were about margarine, proposed in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Apparently the local dairy industry had a real problem with vegetable based margarine. It was a threat to their livelihood.

“For a long time you couldn’t actually color margarine. So there were all these battles about ‘can we actually color margarine, can we let people color their own margarine.”

Eventually, the margarine people won, but for awhile you would have had to add color to your own.