Chief
05-13-2007, 07:41 AM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/307/story/58846.html
PETER CALLAGHAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: May 10th, 2007 01:00 AM
It’s often the first resort of election losers to assert that voters were deceived.
Perhaps it helps dull the pain to imagine that had voters been better informed, they’d have voted “correctly.”
But it is rarely so that voters – collectively – are ignorant or misguided. Given that the size of the voting pool is so large – essentially an opinion poll with a sample size of millions of people – the margin of error is tiny.
And it doesn’t really matter whether they were fooled or not. The election is over, the results are in, and the voters have spoken.
That is, however, unless the losers can convince the courts otherwise. That issue is at the center of a challenge to Initiative 747, which sought to reduce annual increases in the amount governments can get from property taxes to 1 percent. It passed with 58 percent of the vote in 2001.
But a coalition that included Whitman County (which joined King County as the only two counties to reject the measure) and social service advocates have claimed that initiative sponsors misled voters in the drafting and explanation of the initiative.
The history and the legal reasoning get pretty complicated. Sponsor Tim Eyman had just won passage of an earlier initiative, I-722, which reduced state and local governments’ annual property tax growth from 6 percent to 2 percent. That measure, however, was being challenged in court.
Partly out of spite and partly to further his efforts to reduce taxes, Eyman declared that if his opponents thought a 2 percent cap was onerous, perhaps he’d ask voters to cut it to 1 percent. And that’s what I-747 sought to do.
But initiative drafters, including now state Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson, had a problem. Should they write it to amend I-722, which had been approved by voters but was being held up in court? Or should they write it to amend the old law that existed before I-722? Either way they risked amending a section of law that was no longer in force.
Sponsors did the more logical thing – they sought to amend I-722, which was the law of the state at the time the initiative was drafted. But they guessed wrong, because months after I-747 was drafted and weeks after signatures were turned in, the Supreme Court ruled I-722 was unconstitutional.
What to do? Nothing because the state and the sponsors had anticipated just such a problem. In the voters pamphlet, the state explained that I-722 was subject to a court challenge. The pamphlet laid out the initiative both ways – that it would reduce the tax cap to 1 percent either from the pre-I-722 limit of 6 percent or from the post- I-722 limit of 2 percent.
The voters pamphlet was pretty clear about it all. So was the debate on the issue. So was the news coverage.
And on election day, so were the voters.
But King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts disagreed. She agreed with the opponents that voters might have thought they were approving a small reduction in the cap – from 2 percent to 1 percent – and not the larger decrease from 6 percent. Voters might have made a different decision had they known the cut was that severe, she ruled.
Set aside, for the moment, that state voters had just approved a cut in the cap from 6 percent to 2 percent in I-722. Roberts’ ruling put I-747 at risk as well.
On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments. While the discussion focused on two sections of the state Constitution that require full explanations of how laws are being amended by the Legislature or by the people, the issue should really be more basic: What did the voters know and when did they know it?
Only if the justices feel the need to go beyond that question does this case get complicated and hard to decide. That’s because it isn’t about whether 1 percent growth in revenues is adequate. It’s about whether voters have the right to set it that low and whether they meant to do so in 2001.
PETER CALLAGHAN; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: May 10th, 2007 01:00 AM
It’s often the first resort of election losers to assert that voters were deceived.
Perhaps it helps dull the pain to imagine that had voters been better informed, they’d have voted “correctly.”
But it is rarely so that voters – collectively – are ignorant or misguided. Given that the size of the voting pool is so large – essentially an opinion poll with a sample size of millions of people – the margin of error is tiny.
And it doesn’t really matter whether they were fooled or not. The election is over, the results are in, and the voters have spoken.
That is, however, unless the losers can convince the courts otherwise. That issue is at the center of a challenge to Initiative 747, which sought to reduce annual increases in the amount governments can get from property taxes to 1 percent. It passed with 58 percent of the vote in 2001.
But a coalition that included Whitman County (which joined King County as the only two counties to reject the measure) and social service advocates have claimed that initiative sponsors misled voters in the drafting and explanation of the initiative.
The history and the legal reasoning get pretty complicated. Sponsor Tim Eyman had just won passage of an earlier initiative, I-722, which reduced state and local governments’ annual property tax growth from 6 percent to 2 percent. That measure, however, was being challenged in court.
Partly out of spite and partly to further his efforts to reduce taxes, Eyman declared that if his opponents thought a 2 percent cap was onerous, perhaps he’d ask voters to cut it to 1 percent. And that’s what I-747 sought to do.
But initiative drafters, including now state Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson, had a problem. Should they write it to amend I-722, which had been approved by voters but was being held up in court? Or should they write it to amend the old law that existed before I-722? Either way they risked amending a section of law that was no longer in force.
Sponsors did the more logical thing – they sought to amend I-722, which was the law of the state at the time the initiative was drafted. But they guessed wrong, because months after I-747 was drafted and weeks after signatures were turned in, the Supreme Court ruled I-722 was unconstitutional.
What to do? Nothing because the state and the sponsors had anticipated just such a problem. In the voters pamphlet, the state explained that I-722 was subject to a court challenge. The pamphlet laid out the initiative both ways – that it would reduce the tax cap to 1 percent either from the pre-I-722 limit of 6 percent or from the post- I-722 limit of 2 percent.
The voters pamphlet was pretty clear about it all. So was the debate on the issue. So was the news coverage.
And on election day, so were the voters.
But King County Superior Court Judge Mary Roberts disagreed. She agreed with the opponents that voters might have thought they were approving a small reduction in the cap – from 2 percent to 1 percent – and not the larger decrease from 6 percent. Voters might have made a different decision had they known the cut was that severe, she ruled.
Set aside, for the moment, that state voters had just approved a cut in the cap from 6 percent to 2 percent in I-722. Roberts’ ruling put I-747 at risk as well.
On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments. While the discussion focused on two sections of the state Constitution that require full explanations of how laws are being amended by the Legislature or by the people, the issue should really be more basic: What did the voters know and when did they know it?
Only if the justices feel the need to go beyond that question does this case get complicated and hard to decide. That’s because it isn’t about whether 1 percent growth in revenues is adequate. It’s about whether voters have the right to set it that low and whether they meant to do so in 2001.