Were people who voted for Eyman’s initiative foolish or just conflicted?

Despite a vote last November, Washington’s sales tax will stay right where it is, for now, anyway.

Fifty-two percent of the voters approved Tim Eyman’s initiative to cut the state sales tax by 1 percent unless the Legislature amended the constitution to require a two-thirds majority vote for tax increases. But a King County judge has now ruled it unconstitutional.

Judge William Downing said it violated the single-subject rule and was also a thinly-disguised effort to propose a constitutional amendment, which only the Legislature can do.

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He said you can’t tie the Legislature’s hands like that.

Eyman’s first reaction was shock.

“Based on the briefing, based on the arguments, I thought our side just blew away the other side,” he said.

He believes the judge was calling the voters stupid.

“Don’t insult the voters’ intelligence,” he said, further saying he doesn’t believe the voters didn’t know what they were doing.

“I mean, it’s kind of silly when you’re dealing with an issue that was on the ballot, thoroughly debated, thoroughly given a rectal exam by the media – everybody involved,” Eyman said.

But the judge wasn’t arguing that voters were stupid. He said the one-subject rule is there so that the will of the voters is unambiguous. In this case, how do you know a majority of voters really wanted both the two-thirds amendment and the 1 percent tax cut? It could be that some only wanted the tax cut and merely tolerated the amendment, or vice versa.

But Eyman says voters clearly wanted the whole package, that’s why 52 percent voted yes.

“This is an incredibly simple, easy-to-understand initiative,” he continued. “And voters had a chance to weigh what are the implications, and they ultimately said [they] like the package. [They liked] the fact that this thing lowers the sales tax unless the Legislature puts the constitutional amendment on the ballot.”

But even if that’s true, the judge is also saying initiatives can’t be used as a way to propose a constitutional amendment.

So, it’s on to the Supreme Court, but Eyman isn’t waiting for that.

He’s already filed several new initiatives to accomplish the same thing &#8211 one version would make tax increases passed by the Legislature expire after one year unless approved by a two-thirds majority of lawmakers. A separate initiative would cancel any tax increase by a year unless approved by a popular vote.