Expanded gun background checks passing

Washington voters clearly want more extensive background checks for gun purchases but they aren’t sure whether they want to mandate smaller class sizes in their public schools.

In a duel between competing gun proposals, Initiative 594, which extends the background checks now required for guns purchased in stores to most private sales as well, was passing Tuesday night with about 60 percent of the vote. Initiative 591, which wouldn’t let the state require more stringent checks than the national standard, was failing with about 54 percent of the voters saying no.

The competing gun initiatives matched some of the biggest names in the gun control debate. Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, the Arizona Democrat seriously wounded in a mass shooting, led a list of high-profile victims who came to Washington to campaign for I-594. The National Rifle Association threw its weight against I-594 and for I-591, which also would have prohibited state officials from confiscating guns without due process – protection that opponents said was already offered by federal and state constitutions.

I-594 passed easily in the populous Puget Sound counties and was leading in Spokane County, but most of the rest of Eastern Washington was saying no to it and yes to I-591.

Initiative 1351, which would require the Legislature to reduce class sizes in all public schools by 2019 and put a special emphasis on schools in low-income areas, was trailing by about 12,000 votes out of nearly 1.2 million counted as county elections offices tallied ballots that have come in over the past two weeks.

Counting will continue for most of the month, and supporters of I-1351 may be waiting until the last ballots are tallied. Margins like those reported for the gun initiatives are almost mathematically impossible to turn around.

I-1351, sponsored and largely funded by teachers’ unions, would drop class sizes to mandated maximums, require more teachers and more classrooms, and carries a price tag estimated by the state Office of Financial Management at $4.7 billion by 2019. Supporters questioned those numbers.

Washington is under state Supreme Court orders to improve public schools, and teachers argued that smaller class sizes is a major part of that because Washington has among the largest class-size limits in the country.

Opposition never coalesced into a formal campaign but legislators argued the initiative is a “budget buster” with the state already facing billions of dollars in improvements to meet the court mandate.