Changing the Rules

They were crammed onto the ballots by men who could inscribe the Gettysburg Address on the head of a pin. They were couched in legal jargon that boggled the brain. U.S. voters struggled mightily to decipher and decide upon propositions to outlaw gambling, legalize liquor, install traffic lights, enlarge cities and amend state constitutions. In the hullabaloo over the 1962 election fights, the decisions on these propositions were often ignored. But in many states, what won may turn out to be even more important than who won.

In half a dozen states, thorny fights were waged between rural and urban voters about how the legislature should be apportioned. In West Virginia and Oregon, the voters turned down proposals that would have fortified the representation of the country areas against the steadily growing demands of the city dwellers. Maryland, Florida and California proposals to give more heft to the cities were defeated. Colorado struck a classic compromise, approved a plan that set a fixed size for the senate while guaranteeing that the house be reapportioned regularly on a strict population basis.

Slimming Down. In Nebraska. Colorado and North Carolina, voters approved plans to trim the gingerbread off woefully rococo judicial systems. North Carolina's Governor Terry Sanford led his state's fight for court reform, declared that the present system contains "glaring evils"--among them, the fact that most of the nearly 900 justices of the peace get no pay for hearing a case unless they convict the defendant.

Heeding the counsel of both Pat Brown and Dick Nixon. California defeated 3 to 2 a scheme that would have allowed grand juries and a flock of state and federal boards and officials to pin the label "Communist" on any organization. In effect, the proposal would have turned grand juries into judges as well as accusers. The leader of the fight for the amendment, which the Los Angeles Times called "intolerable to free men," was whiskery Actor Walter (The Real McCoys) Brennan. who rounded up nearly a million signatures to get the plan on the ballot.

Disaster & Sin. Proposals to permit St. Louis and Memphis to merge with their surrounding suburbs were defeated at the polls. West Virginia voters righteously turned down a proposal that would have legalized the sale of liquor by the drink at local option. But the full life carried the day in Los Angeles County, where the citizens agreed to allow the draw-poker parlors to keep flourishing in the town of Gardena.

Virginia easily approved a scheme to allow two-fifths of the general assembly to make temporary laws if nuclear attack wiped out a majority of legislators. But Rhode Island passed a measure that sets up an emergency chain of command in case such disaster obliterates top officials. The surprising opposition to this praiseworthy plan caused Major General John M. McGreevy. state civil defense director, to shrug: "I don't think the voters knew what was involved here."

Banished Bull. As always, similar claims could be made around the country on many issues. But not in Birmingham. There the voters had long debated ways of replacing the three-man commission (including one man designated as mayor), which both made the laws and administered them. The proposal on the ballot was to scrap the commission in favor of a nine-member council and a separate mayor. When both the Birmingham News and Post-Herald backed the reform, Mayor Arthur J. Hanes not only quit talking to newsmen but threatened to turn them out of the city hall pressroom. Said he: "Why should we continue to provide quarters, heat and light for our enemies?" It was no use. The reform was passed by 2,401 votes, and thereby removed from office one of the South's most determined racists: Public Safety Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor, the police boss who looked the other way during the riot against Freedom Riders in his city last year.

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