Sometimes the best answers to difficult questions are the obvious ones. Take the debate roiling around tax-funded private-school vouchers here in Utah.

The Legislature erred in the way it passed the voucher law. But legislators can set it right quite simply and responsibly in a special session, which Gov. Jon Huntsman should call immediately.

House Speaker Greg Curtis, House Majority Leader Dave Clark, Senate President John Valentine and Senate Majority Leader Curtis Bramble should put aside their personal support for vouchers and whatever part they may have played in an apparent strategy: to pass two separate voucher bills so that if voters rejected the original by referendum, the second could stand in its stead.

What happened was this: Instead of making changes to the original voucher legislation the regular way, by amending the bill, legislators instead passed a separate bill, called "Education Voucher Amendments."

More than 124,000 voters signed petitions to place the original law on the ballot. The referendum vote is scheduled for November.

Meanwhile, the amendment bill - a disjointed, incomplete, underfunded document - is being promoted as sufficient foundation for the most expansive and most controversial voucher law any state has ever seen.

Such a system would change the structure and historical state support of public education in Utah by sending taxpayer money to private schools. Despite its broad implications, some legislators and Attorney General Mark Shurtleff want the State Board of Education to implement the law using this half-formed and legally questionable amendment bill.

The school board responsibly refused Tuesday to implement a voucher system based solely on the amendment bill. Now those on both sides are turning to the courts to get us out of this quagmire. But the courts act slowly, and in the end, a judicial ruling on specific issues might not resolve the basic one: whether voters should be able to reject school vouchers.

There is an easier way. The governor should send the mess back to the Legislature, where it all originated. Lawmakers should vote to repeal the amendments law so that the referendum decides vouchers and Utahns' constitutional right to reject a law is not circumvented.

It's that simple.