The initiative process for Washington and Idaho somewhat resembles an old spaghetti Western starring Clint Eastwood: “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly.”

At their best, initiatives offer a grass-roots way around a dug-in group of powerful legislators hell-bent on ignoring their constituents’ collective voice. Such was the case two years ago when entrenched Republican leaders refused to endorse a sensible gaming compact between Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s office and Idaho tribes. The tribes collected enough signatures to put a gaming initiative on the fall ballot, survived a rear-guard court action by legislative leaders and won overwhelmingly at the polls.

Anti-tax rebel Tim Eyman’s Initiative 695 (car tabs) represents the bad. In Washington, the car license excise fee had gotten so out of hand that voters in 1999 were willing to gamble with the state’s transportation infrastructure to embrace a cheaper, across-the-board fee. The world didn’t come to an end when the measure passed, as predicted by some public-minded people. But the Spokane Transit Authority’s financial woes began immediately after Washington passed the initiative with 58 percent approval coming from Spokane County.

A mock initiative proposed by David G. Goldstein in 2003 reflects the ugly. The Seattle computer programmer plunked down a $5 filing fee with the Secretary of State’s Office to register his initiative – a measure designed to spoof the process by declaring Eyman “a horse’s ass.” Goldstein collected more headlines than signatures in his attempt to show how easy it was to abuse the initiative process.

Unquestionably, the initiative process has been abused in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, where demagogues or opportunists, like Eyman, with access to special interest money to pay signature gatherers can qualify unsound measures for the ballot. But it still provides the only way for the average citizen to overrule the inability, reluctance or stubbornness of legislators to pass certain laws.

By initiative, Idaho created an apolitical Fish and Game Commission, limited property taxes and approved a state lottery. Washington has used initiatives to clean up toxic wastes, advocate for land-use planning and recycling.

Although some initiatives are worrisome, like Eyman’s myopic attacks on taxes, we’d be bothered more by the process if everyone with a pocket full of money and a cause could put a measure on the ballot and win. That’s not the case in either Washington or Idaho.

In Washington, where 198,000 valid signatures are now needed to qualify an initiative, only one in seven land on the ballot – and half of those are torpedoed by voters. In Idaho, only two initiatives have made the ballot since the 1997 Legislature imposed conditions for signature gathering that were so strict that a judge ruled them unconstitutional. Love it or hate it, the initiative process is here to stay. And that’s good. Sometimes bad. And occasionally ugly.