The U.S. state of Washington has had a system of direct voting since gaining statehood in 1889. Citizens and the state legislature both have the ability to place new legislation, or legislation recently passed by the state legislature, on the ballot for a popular vote. Washington has three types of ballot measures that can be voted on in a general election: initiatives, referendums, and legislatively referred constitutional amendments. In order to be placed on the ballot, supporters of a measure must gather signatures from registered voters. From 1898 to 1912, the only ballot measures allowed were legislatively referred constitutional amendments. In 1912, an amendment successfully passed to create a citizen-led process for initiatives and referendums, and the first successful initiative was passed in 1914. Since adopting this process, ballot measures have become widely accepted as part of Washington's electoral system. over 2,000 different initiatives had been filed with the state, along with a significantly smaller number of referendums. Of those, only a fraction have received the required signatures to be placed on the ballot. In recent years, ballot measures have been used to legalize politically contentious policies such as assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, and marijuana use. The use of signature gatherers (workers paid to gather signatures for ballot measures) has attracted significant controversy in the state, as has some activists' aggressive approach to ballot measures. Background Washington entered the United States as a territory in 1853 and was admitted as the 42nd state on November 11, 1889. The Constitution of Washington, which had itself been approved by a vote of the people, laid out the first guidelines for ballot measures. Article XXIII, Section 1 dictated that constitutional amendments required passing by a two-thirds vote in the state legislature and being approved by a majority of voters in the next general election. This section also required that details of the amendment should be published in newspapers across the state before election day. In 1912, Constitutional Amendment Article II, Sec. 1 passed. This amendment granted people the power to place measures on the ballot every election via petition. For one of these measures to be valid, it needed signatures of support from at least eight percent of the voting population, based on turnout from the previous election. Initiatives allowed people to propose new laws and referendums allowed people to challenge laws passed by the legislature. This system of "direct legislation" had previously