What to do with the I-1029 Petitions?

Competing views on what to do with the legally defective I-1029 petitions today from Dick Davis's syndicated column and the Seattle Times editorial page. 

Quick background: I-1029, the local Service Employees International Union's initiative to require certification and more training of long-term care workers (and, one imagines, some how, some way, some day mint more SEIU members from which union dues can be extracted) was filed, numbered, and processed as an initiative to the people for the fall ballot.  But the actual petitions prepared by SEIU, signed by voters, and turned in earlier this month uses the statutory formula for an initiative to the Legislature, a constitutionally distinct species of direct democracy.    

Secretary of State Sam Reed, later aided by the Attorney General's office, has taken an Alfred E Neuman approach to the misstep.  He's decided to process the initiative for the fall ballot, thus choosing to ignore the directive of the petitioners themselves and instead honor SEIU's presumed intent in filing the initiative.  I-1029 opponents, the Community Care Coalition, have rightly called foul, and appear ready to seek a judicial remedy.  Lastly, initiative metaphysician Tim Eyman has weighed in to propose a via media -- don't reject the petitions outright, and don't put the thing on the ballot,  but rather effectuate the will of the petitioners as evidenced by the clear language of the petitions -- send the matter to the Legislature.

All of which Dick's piece nicely explores.  And that is a stark contrast to the Times' effort, which it seems misunderstands or brushes aside the structure, function, and purpose of any petition to the government, the importance of the distinction between initiatives to the people vs. to the Legislature, the statutory formalities that initiative petitions must contain, and the nature of the error here.  Calling the use of the statutory form for a petition to the Legislature a "minor mistake," the Times concludes the error "was not important enough to nullify 300,000 signatures."   

But there's the rub.  300,000 (or more likely, 240-250,000 valid) signatures are on a petition to the Legislature regardless of how the sponsors filed the measure back in March.  Reed's current trajectory ironically does nullify those 300,000 signatures because it takes an action contrary to their express directive.  It honors SEIU's presumed intent as sponsor, excuses the union's apparent printing mishap, and assumes the voters were ignorant or mistaken in signing the petition.      

Either way, handling I-1029 will involve tolerance for irregularity.  If Reed is forced by court order to submit the initiative to the Legislature, that will be contrary to its sponsor's affidavit and the measure would bear a way-off serial number (were this correctly filed as an initiative to the Legislature, it would have likely been called I-409).  But it seems to me those irregularities have less gravity than assuming voters didn't know, or didn't care, about the plain language of what they were signing, a position which effectively removes them from the constitutional equation and reduces them to mere cogs in a sponsor's signature-harvesting combine.

Davis, Eyman, and the Community Care Coalition have touched upon the better argument here.

Comments

[Tim Eyman, I-985 co-sponsor, www.ReduceCongestion.org]

Here's another perspective by the Tacoma News Tribune's editorial page editor Patrick O'Callaghan:

Didn't ANYONE read those petitions?
http://blogs.thenewstribune.com/oped/2008/07/16/p28709#more28709

[Tim Eyman, I-985 co-sponsor, www.ReduceCongestion.org]

Check out today's TNT:

I-1029: What it said vs. what they said it said

THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE TACOMA NEWS TRIBUNE, July 17th, 2008, http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/414830.html

Are Washingtonians smart? Or are they dumb?
Some might have doubts about their collective intelligence, but the state constitution presumes they are smart enough to enact laws through the initiative process.

Secretary of State Sam Reed apparently has a few doubts of his own.

He’s just accepted Initiative 1029, which mandates more training for home-care workers, as an initiative to the people. That’s what its sponsor, the powerful Service Employees International Union, wants: A place on the November ballot.

The problem is that the petitions didn’t identify I-1029 as a direct-to-ballot initiative. They identified it as an initiative to the Legislature. It’s there in black and white, right in the middle of the sheets, in the concise description: The measure is to be “transmitted to the Legislature of the State of Washington at its next ensuing regular session ...”

Initiatives to the people and initiatives to the Legislature are very different animals. The latter are presented to lawmakers when they get together in January, just as the I-1029 petitions proposed. Lawmakers study these measures and do one of three things: adopt them as written, reject them and let them proceed to the ballot by themselves, or put alternative measures on the ballot alongside them.

The SEIU says the “transmitted to the Legislature” part was an accident. That’s quite an accident, given the legal advice this union can buy. Nevertheless, Reed has decided the mistake was a mere glitch that shouldn’t keep the initiative off the ballot.

The argument: Offering I-1029 directly to the electorate honors the intent of the citizens who signed it, because they assumed it was what the SEIU said it was, not what the actual petitions said it was.

Honoring the intent of citizens is, of course, a good thing. But that argument assumes that all of the roughly 300,000 citizens who signed it failed to read what they were signing. Why not assume that at least some did read it – perhaps enough of them that the initiative otherwise wouldn’t have qualified?

It’s easy to imagine someone signing an initiative to the Legislature when he or she would have rejected the same measure as an initiative to the people. Initiatives to the Legislature get vetted. They get hearings, and lawmakers hear arguments pro and con. If they spot a serious major flaw, they can propose a fix with a ballot alternative.

As secretary of state, Reed may have the legal discretion to do what he did – though that’s likely to be challenged in court. The bigger issue is how much credit to give the voters who lent their signatures to it. Supporters of I-1029 are essentially saying that virtually all 300,000 missed the critical “to the Legislature” language and ought to be given an initiative to the people instead.

But that’s giving their inattention the benefit of the doubt. If their carefulness were given the benefit of the doubt, I-1029 would be headed for the 2009 Legislature, not the 2008 ballot.

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