An initiative to boost training for long-term health care workers has been put back on the ballot by the Washington State Supreme Court.

The initiative is sponsored by the nation's largest union, the Service Employees International Union, as part of a strategy of organizing such health care aides. The idea is that by requiring training and imposing other regulation of such aides, the union can leverage government influence to convince such aides to join the union.

But the initiative had a fundamental error in its drafting. Petitions circulated among voters identified the measure as an "initiative to the legislature" -- what other states might call an indirect initiative, submitted to lawmakers -- instead of a citizen's initiative to be submitted to the people. But all other filings referred to the initiative as a citizen's initiative. The court, without offering a justification for its ruling, said the mistake shouldn't knock the initiative off the ballot. That's a good decision, but it again points out the need to permit mistakes to be fixed during the initiative process in Washington and other states.