A BALLOT FULL OF VOTER INITIATIVES BECOMES AN ISSUE ITSELF IN OREGON

SCAPPOOSE, Ore., Oct. 24 - Forgive Carolyn Knowles for feeling a bit
"overwhelmed," as she put it, when Volume I of the Oregon voters' guide -
all 376 pages of it, encompassing 26 ballot measures and 607 arguments for
or against them - showed up in her mailbox a few days ago.

Make federal income taxes fully deductible on Oregon returns? Limit total
state spending to 15 percent of taxpayers' personal income? Prohibit public
school instruction "encouraging, promoting or sanctioning" homosexual or
bisexual behaviors? Ban the use of all "body-gripping animal traps"?

"It's like a full-time job trying to figure all these out," said Ms.
Knowles, who already has a full-time job as a cashier in a nearby casino.
"It's totally confusing. Sometimes I'm not even sure if a yes vote really
means yes or no. Unless you're a real intellectual, you can get mighty
bogged down."

It may be democracy in its purest form, as proponents of Oregon's
initiative process like to say, or democracy run amok, as critics contend.
But no one disputes that voters here face a staggering number of policy
decisions, or that the official voters' guide hardly helps cut through the
fog for voters who mark their ballots at home in a state where almost all
votes are mailed in.

"For most voters, it resembles something written in Greek as poorly
translated from the original Urdu," said William M. Lunch, a political
science professor at Oregon State University.

Some 102 years after South Dakota became the first state to allow citizens
to vote directly on their laws, Oregon is sticking to its tradition of
using the process more than any other state. Not since North Dakota did so
in 1932 has a state put so many citizen-sponsored initiatives before its
people in a single election, says the Initiative and Referendum Institute,
a group based in Washington that tracks such statistics.

Oregon's crowded ballot this year also illustrates two broader themes in
the initiative process around the nation: its ever-expanding use and the
growing number of questions about whether it is such a wise method of
making public policy. Critics say the initiative process is subject to
exploitation, especially by those who have the wealth to pay professional
signature gatherers to get a measure on the ballot and finance an
advertising blitz to get it passed.

Voters are increasingly being confronted directly with weighty decisions.
More measures were placed on more state ballots in the 1990's than in any
other decade, surpassing the record set back in the 1910's, and several
important policies - the tax-cutting revolt, bans on affirmative action,
approval of the medicinal use of marijuana - have become law this way in
recent years, mainly in Western states where the initiative process is most
firmly rooted.

Of the initiatives brought to the ballot with citizens' signatures, roughly
40 percent have been approved in the past 100 years; in the last decade,
that pass rate rose to 49 percent, according to the initiative institute.

This year, voters in 42 states face 204 initiatives or referendums,
according to the institute. Some are critically important, like several
anti-tax measures here in Oregon that, if passed, could force the state to
cut $5 billion or more in spending from its anticipated $32 billion budget
for 2001-2003.

Voters in several states will decide major education issues, including
proposed voucher programs in California and Michigan. Colorado initiatives
would require local governments to put development plans before voters and
require new background checks for those who buy weapons at gun shows.

Nebraskans will decide whether to prohibit gay unions, and Alaskans will
vote on a proposition that would make theirs the first state to legalize
the private recreational use of marijuana. And some measures are decidedly
less weighty, involving relatively minor language changes in state
constitutions that nonetheless require voter approval.

It is also clear, however, that some sort of movement against the process
is growing - started in part by state legislators who believe that
initiatives represent a direct abrogation of their lawmaking authority. In
the past two years alone, seven states - Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi,
Missouri, Montana, Utah and Wyoming - have taken steps to stiffen the
procedural restrictions for initiatives, making it harder to get them on
the ballot.

In Nebraska, voters will decide on Nov. 7 whether initiatives should have
to be approved twice before becoming law.

And even here in Oregon, some voters are clearly beginning to have some
second thoughts as they prepare to go to the polls. Actually, they are not
really going to the polls at all because, under an initiative passed two
years ago, Oregon is now the first and only state to conduct its elections
entirely by mail.

"Whatever happened to representative government?" said Darryl Sykes, an
operator in the local wastewater treatment plant here in this Portland
suburb. "A lot of the stuff in the voters' guide is not written in layman's
terms that the average guy can understand. I thought we elected people to
figure this stuff out."

Like a lot of other voters here in Scappoose, Mr. Sykes also expressed
concern about the tremendous amount of money being pumped into some of the
campaigns over ballot measures here, evidenced in the newspaper, television
and radio advertisements that are visible or audible all over the state.

One can even be excused for concluding that elected representatives are
something of an afterthought here this year. Candidates for office,
including those for the presidency and Congress, are covered in Volume II
of the voters' guide, which is a mere 36 pages long - less than a tenth the
size of the one for the ballot measures. Even the Secretary of State, Bill
Bradbury, issued something of an apologetic-sounding cover letter to the
larger guide, observing that "it looks more like your telephone directory"
than a voters' pamphlet.

Still, many Oregonians say they remain fiercely proud of a system that
allows them to have such a direct effect on lawmaking. And plenty say they
do not care how confusing the initiative process may be; they would rather
vote on these matters themselves than trust their elected representatives
to do so.

"Sure, it's a pain in the neck, and I'm still wading through that book,"
said Ted Stanwood, who owns an engine parts shop here, referring to the
voters' guide. "But it gives the common man a voice. Otherwise, you're
leaving it up to some person who may say one thing to get elected and then
do another after getting into office."

Part of the reason that so many measures are on the ballot this year is
that Oregon's government is divided between a Democratic governor and a
Republican-controlled Legislature, so seven of the statewide measures are
so-called legislative referrals, some of which clearly represent the
lawmakers' effort to avert a threatened veto from the governor on some
matter by taking the issue directly to the voters.

But perhaps lost amid the throng of measures on Oregon's ballot is a sense
of just how far-reaching some are - especially the anti-tax measures,
which, taken together, would force the state to cut billions of dollars
from its budget and even forego some federal money sent here.

Another item, Measure 93, would require popular votes on any proposed tax
or fee increase of any kind in the state. To become law, the tax would have
to be approved by the same margin by which Measure 93 itself passed.

Six of the 26 measures were placed on the ballot by anti-tax groups in an
effort largely spearheaded by Bill Sizemore, an unsuccessful candidate for
governor two years ago who has made promotion of the tax initiatives into a
virtual full-time business. Mr. Sizemore receives a $70,000 salary from
Oregon Taxpayers United, a group that lobbies for lower taxes and less
government.

In a recent cartoon in The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, a
teacher diagrams the three branches of state government on the chalkboard:
"Executive. Legislative. Sizemore."

M. Dane Waters, the president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute,
sharply disputed the notion that the initiative process was being abused.
In fact, Mr. Waters said, it was frequently used to take to the public
important issues that legislators were ducking, including tax cuts and
vouchers.

And while it is true, he acknowledged, that a lot of money can often ensure
that a measure will be on the ballot, "you can't buy a yes vote."

"The proof just isn't there," Mr. Waters said.

Here in Scappoose, some voters defended the crammed ballot they face this
fall.

"I wouldn't give up this process just because it means I have a lot of
reading to do," said Matt Kangas, a financial adviser.

But others, like Ms. Knowles, said there was just too much reading to do.

"I like having the power to make these decisions," she said. "But for me,
for the average person, 26 is just too many."

Secretary of State Bradbury, in his letter, did have some helpful advice on
what Oregonians could do with the voters' guide after they mailed in their
ballots.

"Although this pamphlet looks different," he wrote, "it is just as
recyclable as previous voters' pamphlets. I encourage you to recycle it."