AS 200 PROPOSALS APPEAR ON BALLOTS IN 42 STATES, VOTERS WILL TEST
POPULARITY OF FAR-REACHING IDEAS

Maine's Bold Measures Include Lottery Games, Doctor-Assisted Suicide And
Protection For Gays

WASHINGTON -- The often-successful drive to legalize marijuana as a
medicine and the seldom victorious effort to allow doctor-assisted suicide
will be back on the ballot in some states next week amid an outpouring of
voter issues.

Citizens with gripes, or policy ideas that state legislatures won't pursue,
will have the chance Tuesday to test the popularity of their causes as more
than 200 proposals go before the voters in 42 states.

Once again, says the Initiative and Referendum Institute, a
Washington-based group that tracks citizen actions, voters will face
"politically diverse, emotional and very controversial issues."

What is different this year, the institute adds, "is the sheer magnitude of
the impact the election outcomes might have. Tremendous social and fiscal
changes are possible, and if they occur, the impact on our society will be
long lasting."

Perhaps the boldest collection of measures in any one state will be on
Maine's ballot. One proposal would make that state the second, after
Oregon, to create a "right to die" by authorizing doctor-assisted suicide
for "a terminally ill adult who is of sound mind."

Another proposal tests voters' willingness to put into effect a bill,
already passed by the legislature, to bar discrimination against gays in
access to jobs, housing, credit and public accommodations. Twice before,
such measures have been repealed by the voters. But polls indicate that the
new measure might prevail.

Maine also will vote on whether to allow video lottery games at
horse-racing tracks, with 40 percent of the take to be passed out to local
governments.

Gay rights also figure on the ballots in three other states. After
Vermont's move this year to authorize gays to join in marriage-like "civil
unions," Nebraska will be the next state to decide on the issue. On the
ballot there is a proposal to ban civil unions, along with a constitutional
amendment to forbid gays to actually marry.

Oregon will decide whether to bar public-school teachers from teaching
about homosexuality in a way that "encourages, promotes or sanctions" such
behavior.

On another marriage issue, Alabama will vote on whether to legalize
marriage between people of different races -- a symbolic vote only. A ban
included in the state constitution has been unconstitutional since a 1967
Supreme Court ruling, but Alabama has never formally acknowledged that fact
by repealing the ban. South Carolina voters lifted a similar ban in that
state two years ago.

Abortion figures in only one ballot contest this year: A Colorado proposal
would forbid abortions until after doctors and clinics had given pregnant
women information that might discourage them from ending their pregnancies.

The effort to use citizen initiatives to permit the use of marijuana as a
form of medicine continues this year, with ballot proposals in Colorado and
Nevada. Marijuana-as-medicine proposals have succeeded in the past in
Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine and Washington, as well as in the
District of Columbia.

This year, Alaskans will be asked to go further and simply legalize the
possession, use, cultivation and sale of marijuana -- something no state
has yet done. If that measure passed, it would most likely prompt an effort
by the Justice Department to bar the measure from taking effect, on the
theory that the federal ban on marijuana takes precedence.

In California and Massachusetts, the ballots includes proposals to provide
treatment, instead of jail time, for some users of illegal drugs.

Among the usual array of education questions, the ballots in California and
Michigan contain measures to authorize vouchers that students could use to
pay private school tuition. The Washington state ballot has a measure to
encourage charter schools as an alternative to regular public schools.

The money that states are being paid from the settlement of lawsuits
against the tobacco industry remains uncommitted in several states, because
of competing demands for it.

This year, voters in Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Oregon will decide
whether to direct legislatures to spend the money on such things as health
insurance for the elderly or low-income families, and research on early
detection of diseases. Some states will consider setting up mechanisms for
deciding how to spend the money.

The English-only movement, successful in the past in using the ballot to
promote official use of that language, is represented by measures in
Oklahoma and Utah. In Arizona, voters will face a proposed ban of bilingual
education in the public schools.

Gun-control reappears on the ballots in Colorado and Oregon, where voters
will decide whether to require criminal background checks before a purchase
made at a gun show can be completed.

Proposals on wildlife protection, and some offsetting proposals to protect
hunters' rights, are on the ballots of a handful of states.
Animal-protection proposals have often succeeded.

Voters across the nation will also be deciding whether to enact anti-sprawl
laws in hundreds of referendums that will show how far residents of
fast-growing regions are willing to go to slow the rapid pace of
construction in the suburbs.

Statewide measures in Arizona and Colorado are the highest-profile
responses yet to residents' concerns in regions like Denver and Phoenix
that the quality of life is being harmed by congestion and crowding caused
by development.

Hundreds of anti-growth proposals are on local ballots across the nation,
including measures that could slow the pace of new development in parts of
California.

In 23 states there are at least 33 other statewide growth-related
initiatives, including many calling for transportation improvements, said
Phyllis Myers, president of State Resource Strategies, a consulting firm in
Washington.

Oregon is the state with the most measures, 26. A dozen or more are on the
ballots in Arizona, Alabama and Colorado.

The New York Times contributed to this report.