This was expected. The Community Care Coalition of Washington said they would file a lawsuit to keep Initiative 1029 off the ballot.

Secretary of State Sam Reed has accepted the 300,000-plus signatures on petitions and plans to have his staff start counting a sample of them next week.

The Service Employees International Union Local 775 circulated initiative petitions that said I-1029 would go to the Legislature. But they said they "meant" it would go to the people this November.

At stake is a one-year delay in the public vote on whether home care workers should have 76 hours of training. Taxpayers would pay for the training for home-care workers who take care of Medicaid clients and poor people. The coalition's members would pay to train their private pay clients.

UPDATE: Here's what Reed had to say,

“We stand by our decision to accept over 300,000 voter signatures on I-1029 petitions, and believe that the courts will hold that the Elections Division exercised its discretion properly. A similar case went to the state Supreme Court in 1991 and a unanimous court held that an error on the petition did not require the Secretary of State to reject the signatures.”

“The Secretary of State’s Office looks forward to an expedited review and a timely decision by the court so that state and county officials will know whether Initiative 1029 can be properly certified as an initiative to the people and be included in the state Voters’ Pamphlet and on ballots statewide this fall.”

Here is the coalition news release:

JULY 22, 2008
Contact: Deb Murphy
murphy@wahsa.com
Office: (253) 964‐8870
Cell: (253) 468‐5394
CARE COALITION FILES LEGAL ACTION TO FORCE SECRETARY OF STATE
TO SUBMIT INITIATIVE 1029 TO LEGISLATURE
Reed Should Follow Instruction on Petition Forms, Group Says
A lawsuit filed today in Washington State Supreme Court seeks to force Secretary of State Sam Reed to
send Initiative 1029 to the legislature, as the petition forms clearly state. The lawsuit was filed by the
Community Care Coalition of Washington, which said that Reed shouldn’t be allowed to ignore the clear
instructions printed on the initiative petitions.

[More:]

“The Secretary has justified his decision based on the stated intentions of the initiative’s sponsors” said
coalition spokesperson Deb Murphy. “If the initiative is placed on the ballot, he is choosing to ignore the
clear, written intentions of more than 300,000 voters that petitioned him to send the measure to the
legislature.”
“The voters’ directions are clearly spelled out in black and white,” Murphy continued. “Their intentions
should be respected and their stated wishes followed. If Sam Reed isn’t going to do that on his own, we
need the court to force him to do so.”
Choosing to send the initiative to the people instead of to the legislature, despite the plain language of the
petitions, eliminates the rights of voters to chose the process by which laws are passed. “This shouldn’t be
a matter for discretion,” says Murphy.
The coalition lawsuit argues that voters are well aware of the distinct differences in the two forms of
initiatives allowed in Washington. It believes that voters should not be presumed to sign initiative petitions
indiscriminately. Rather, the coalition contends that voters are familiar with and should be presumed to
understand the difference between an immediate “accept or reject” vote by the people and the directive to
the legislature to consider a measure in a deliberative process with a variety of potential outcomes.
Initiative 1029 is sponsored by Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Ironically,
last year an SEIU spokesman wrote that initiative forms should be rejected because they are the wrong size,
lack the warning against signing multiple petitions, or if the sponsor fails to accurately print the title,
summary or initiative text on the petition form.
“Ignoring the voters’ stated wishes in favor of SEIU’s preferences rewards them for their error and sacrifices
the rights of voters,” Murphy concluded. “That would be a very bad precedent to set.”
CCCW includes non‐profit operators of elder care and assisted living facilities, agencies that deliver in‐home
care to the elderly and disabled, adult family home operators, and other primarily small businesses that
deliver care to the elderly and disabled. Its members include Aging Services of Washington (formerly
WAHSA), Developmental Disability Advocates, Home Care of Washington, Inc., Home Care Association of
Washington, Washington Private Duty Association, and Washington State Residential Care Council.
Collectively, they serve some 500,000 elderly and disabled citizens throughout Washington.