Voters will be confronted with a near-record number of citizen-generated questions at the polling place Nov. 7.
The questions range from the politically explosive – such as whether to ban gay marriage and abortion – to the quirky, such as whether to let grocery stores in Massachusetts sell wine or whether an Arizona voter should be eligible to win a $1 million in a lottery just for voting.
The 81 questions that citizens put on the ballot this year, including five to repeal existing laws, is the third-highest number of issues brought by the public since initiatives were first used in 1902, according to the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California. State lawmakers put 123 questions for voters to consider, while a commission in Arizona did the job for state politicians by asking voters there whether to increase lawmakers’ salaries. All told, voters will decide 205 ballot measures Tuesday.
Among the 37 states to certify the ballot measures this fall, Arizona will have the heftiest ballot – with 19 ballot questions. The next longest list of ballot questions will be in Colorado (with 14 measures), California (13), South Dakota (11) and Nevada and Oregon (both with 10). Louisiana voters already weighed in on 13 ballot issues in the Sept. 13 primary and have another eight to consider in November.
Here’s a preview of the hotly contested measures on state ballots:
ABORTION: South Dakota lawmakers touched off a national tempest by passing a strict abortion ban aimed at setting up a legal challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court landmark ruling legalizing abortion. South Dakota voters will decide whether to approve or reject that law, which makes it a felony for anyone to help a woman end her pregnancy, except to save the life of the mother.
In Oregon and California, voters will decide whether to join 35 other states that require teenage girls to notify a parent before getting an abortion. Both initiatives would require doctors to notify parents at least 48 hours before performing the procedure.
GAY MARRIAGE: Voters in eight states – Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin – will decide whether to amend their state constitutions to ban gay marriage.
President Bush and other Republicans seized on a New Jersey court ruling released just two weeks before the election to rally conservatives in the final days of campaigning. The Garden State’s high court said the state constitution required lawmakers to provide equal legal rights for gays, either through civil unions or same-sex marriage.
Twenty states already have adopted similar constitutional same-sex marriage bans and no state has ever voted one down. Opponents hope they can end that trend, pointing to polls showing the questions too close to call in Arizona, South Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin.
In addition to a ban on gay marriage, the Colorado ballot also asks voters in a separate measure whether to extend marital rights to same-sex couples through "domestic partnerships."
MINIMUM WAGE: Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio will decide whether to require employers to pay more than the $5.15-an-hour floor Congress set in 1996. So far, 23 states already have set their minimum wages higher than the federal level.
National polls show voters of both parties roundly support minimum-wage increases. But in the political arena, Democrats have spearheaded moves to boost the minimum wage. Democrats claim the higher pay alleviates poverty, while Republicans who oppose the hikes say government mandated pay raises hurt the local economy and endanger jobs.
SPENDING LIMITS: Voters in Maine, Nebraska and Oregon will take up ballot measures that would cap increases in state spending.
Approval of the measures this year would breathe new life into anti-tax crusaders’ efforts to clamp down on state spending. Similar spending initiatives this year got booted off ballots in Michigan, Montana, Nevada and Oklahoma primarily because of concerns about the validity of the signatures.
The measures were modeled after Colorado’s landmark “Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” which was temporarily suspended in 2005 after voters decided the limits were cutting too deeply into education, transportation and other programs.
STEM CELLS: Missouri voters will weigh in on a measure that would ensure the legality of embryonic stem cell research in the state, after several unsuccessful attempts by Missouri lawmakers to ban those studies.
Supporters of the measure tout its potential for leading to life-saving cures, as well as its economic benefits. Opponents claim it ends human life, because it requires the destruction of human embryos. Since President Bush restricted funding for the research in 2001, six states have moved to support the science.
PROPERTY RIGHTS: Voters in 12 states will decide whether to strengthen property rights, making the issue the most popular one on state ballots this year.
Eight states have measures to roll back governments’ eminent domain powers by prohibiting the forced sale of land to private developers for economic development: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oregon and South Carolina. (Louisiana voters approved a similar measure in September.)
Citizens of Washington state will decide whether state and local governments must pay landowners when they pass regulations that lower property value. In three other Western states – Arizona, California and Idaho – similar “regulatory takings” clauses are combined with questions on eminent domain.
Oregon is the only state to have a law on regulatory takings, which voters there passed in 2004.
The property rights backlash is a response to the Supreme Court’s July 2005 decision in
Kelo v. City of New London, which allowed a local government to raze homes to make way for an office and shopping center.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Michigan voters will decide whether to end affirmative action programs in college admissions and government hiring, a question that arose after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2003 to allow the University of Michigan to use race as a factor in admissions.
The Michigan proposal is based on a 1996 California measure that bans preferential treatment based on race and gender. Washington state voters also passed the measure in 1998, but the issue lost momentum when it failed to get on the Florida ballot in 2000. No state voted on it again until this year. The outcome in Michigan could influence whether the measure’s backers attempt to bring to measure to other states.
SMOKING: Tobacco-related measures are on the ballot in eight states.
Proposals in Arizona, California, Missouri and South Dakota would impose higher cigarette taxes. Voters in Arizona, Nevada and Ohio will choose between competing proposals that would impose a statewide smoking bans in most businesses. And Florida and Idaho citizens will determine whether to earmark funds from the national tobacco settlement toward designated causes.
GAMBLING: Questions on gaming are on the ballot in five states: Arkansas, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Ohio and South Dakota.
Ohioans will determine whether to allow slots at race tracks and at two Cleveland-area facilities, while Rhode Island voters will decide whether to permit a tribal casino. Arkansas will choose whether to allow charities to hold bingos. Nebraska’s initiative would allow video gambling, but in South Dakota, where it’s now legal, the question is whether to ban it.
OTHER: Several one-of-a-kind measures have also generated interest, including a measure to enter Arizona voters into a $1 million lottery; an effort to overhaul child custody rules in North Dakota; a question of whether to let Massachusetts grocery stores sell wine; a move to ban dove hunting in Michigan and an advisory measure on whether to re-instate the death penalty in Wisconsin.
Thirteen ballot questions in California will determine whether the state borrows billions of dollars in bonds to build highways, schools and levees.
For more details about this year’s ballot measures, including links to the full text of the questions put to voters, check out
Stateline.org’s
interactive voting guide. Complete coverage of this year’s elections can be found on
Stateline.org’s
2006 state elections page.
-- Stateline.org staff writers Kavan Peterson, Pamela M. Prah, Christine Vestal and Pauline Vu contributed to this story.
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