Freezing Nukes, Banning Bottles

By Richard Stengel

Ballots list a bumper-sticker crop of 237 questions in 42 states

Not since the Depression had Americans used the mechanisms of initiative and referendum, those venerable tools of direct democracy, in greater numbers or with wider impact. From cracking down on crime to denying electroshock therapy in Berkeley, Calif., there were 237 statewide ballot measures in 42 states and the District of Columbia. California fielded the most, a bumper-sticker crop of 15.

Unlike the spate of ballot measures in 1980, this year's proposals raised issues that were somewhat more liberal than conservative in intent. The trickle of tax-revolt measures that followed after Proposition 13 was approved in California in 1978 seems nearly to have dried up. Indeed, more than the election of a candidate, referendums and initiatives defined voter feeling on specific issues, and citizens were most vocal about nuclear arms, the quality of the environment and crime.

NUCLEAR FREEZE. By far the most common issue was the proposal for a bilateral freeze of the nuclear-arms race. In the closest thing to a national-issue vote in U.S. history, an estimated 10.8 million voters, out of some 18 million who expressed a preference on the issue, cast ballots advocating a freeze. Although the measures were not legally binding, the Administration opposed the movement on the grounds that a freeze would leave the U.S. in a position inferior to that of the Soviet Union. President Reagan had even argued that the campaign was inspired by people who "want the weakening of America." But in proposals that appeared on the ballots in 39 areas, ranging from individual cities and counties to nine states, the concept triumphed in all but three: one county in Arkansas, another in Colorado and the state of Arizona. The freeze won decisively in Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, and was narrowly approved in California. The texts of the measures varied some, but the spirit was the same: most called for immediate negotiations for a verifiable freeze in the production, testing and deployment of all nuclear weapons, missiles and delivery systems. In addition to supporting the freeze, Montana citizens voted against basing the MX missile anywhere in the state. Although voters in the city of Denver advocated a nuclear freeze, a statewide constitutional amendment aimed at moving or shutting down the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant near Denver was handily defeated.

Other nuclear issues were on the ballots in several states. In Massachusetts, voters backed a proposal that would require a referendum before any new low-level nuclear-waste site or power plant could be established. But nuclear power, a whipping boy in recent years, fared well in Maine, which rejected a measure that would have closed down the state's only functioning nuclear-power plant. Idaho voters, meanwhile, required the legislature to seek voter approval before endorsing construction of nuclear-power facilities.

ENVIRONMENT. Four Western states--Arizona, California, Colorado and Washington--decided that their celebrated landscapes were not being sullied by discarded cans and bottles, and defeated measures that would have required a 5-c- deposit and packaging modification. Opponents of the bottle measures were lavishly financed by the beer, bottling, soft-drink, glass and canning industries. Such proposals, they argued, would increase the cost of beer and soft drinks, undermine successful voluntary recycling programs and spawn a plague of cockroaches in sticky stacks of retrieved bottles and cans. In California, opponents of a measure calling for a 5-c- deposit on all beer and soft-drink containers spent nearly $6 million, while supporters worked with a meager $800,000. Lamented Ross Pumfrey, chairman of Californians for Recycling and Litter Clean-Up: "It was a classic example of what money and advertising can do."

CRIME. Across the nation, the message was simple and direct: get tough with criminals. Massachusetts voters, 3 to 2, empowered the state legislature to restore the death penalty, which has not been used in the state since 1947. In Colorado, voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment expanding the types of cases in which judges can refuse bail to accused criminals. In Arizona, citizens chose to deny bail to any defendant for several reasons, among them, if the accused is considered to be a danger to society by the arraigning judge. In Illinois, voters decided, by a 5-to-l landslide, to give judges the power to deny bail to criminal defendants facing possible life sentences.

Fear of crime was the main factor behind the sweeping California proposition that would have required the registration of handguns and virtually proscribed the sale of new ones after April 1983. And fear of crime was one of the principal reasons that Californians soundly defeated that proposal. Led by the implacable and powerful National Rifle Association, opponents of the measure mustered awesome financial firepower: they raised $5.7 million, compared with the $1.8 million spent by supporters of the bill. A gun-toting Roy Rogers protested against the plan, and opponents of the measure handed out a memento pin constructed from a brass .357 Magnum cartridge. Nor is the notion that regulation of firearms is un-American limited to the West. Citizens in New Hampshire voted overwhelmingly "to affirm . . . the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state."

Of the 27 ballot measures around the country dealing with taxes, among the most significant were Oregon's rejection of a Proposition 13 clone and Missouri's approval of a 10 sales tax earmarked for education. In Ohio, on the other hand, only two of 34 school districts approved the raising of local taxes to help their schools. Gambling measures were defeated in Montana and South Dakota, while pari-mutuel betting got the starting bell in Minnesota.

After last week's voting, Pat McGuigan, editor of a newsletter called the Initiative and Referendum Report, had a ready explanation for the upsurge of interest in direct action by the voters. Said he: "People are dissatisfied with representative government. More and more of them feel elections don't mean anything and that interest groups dominate at the legislative level of law-making." Such groups sometimes dominate direct voting too, as evidenced by their spending to defeat bans on handguns and disposable bottles. Even so, in the years to come, those complicated and wordy measures on the nation's ballots seem likely to proliferate as voters attempt to take more matters into their own hands. --By Richard Stengel. Reported by Anne Constable/Washington and William R. Doerner/San Francisco

With reporting by Anne Constable, William R. Doerner

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