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.