CAPITAL MYSTERY: DID VOTERS OK POT?

Congress refuses to pay for counting of '98 referendum

WASHINGTON - Locked away in the memory of a government computer are election
results that Congress doesn't want the voters of the nation's capital to
see.

No one has seen them, in fact - not the city's election officials, whose
computer recorded the votes; not the members of Congress, who control the
political life and the pocketbook of the capital; not the federal judge who,
after five months, still has not ruled on whether anyone should see them.

They are the results of a referendum last November to decide whether
marijuana should be legalized in the District of Columbia strictly for
medical uses, such as for people with AIDS. In a city with the highest
number of AIDS- related deaths per capita in the country, the issue
resonated with a special urgency.

A simple keystroke on an election-board computer would reveal the political
will of more than 140,000 city voters. But a conservative Congress wary of
any move toward legalizing drugs refused to appropriate money to pay for the
vote count - less than $500, according to the election board; $1.64,
according to referendum supporters.

``In this great democracy of ours, where we are espousing democracy around
the world and we don't let the citizens of our nation's capital count the
votes of a democratically held procedure, to me, that is unconscionable,''
said City Councilwoman Carol Schwartz, an unsuccessful Republican candidate
for mayor last fall.

Few can point to something like this ever happening before in which an
election is held, but the votes never are counted and the results never
announced.

``I don't think it has happened in the United States,'' said Austin Ranney,
an expert on elections and referendums, at the University of California at
Berkeley. ``In that sense it's unique. There have been instances elsewhere
in the world, but under highly volatile circumstances.''

Such as wars and coup d'etats. Neither applies here, although advocates of
statehood for the District of Columbia sometimes wonder whether they ever
will see a time when Congress does not overrule even local taxicab
regulations.

AIDS activist Steve Michael launched the petition drive to get the medical
marijuana question on the ballot to help district residents with the
disease. Before Michael died of AIDS in the middle of the drive, he made
his partner, Wayne Turner, promise to take over the effort, because he knew
that, by law, the sponsor had to be a living city resident.

Turner is angry at being dismissed as one ``these drug-legalization people''
by U.S. Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr., a Georgia Republican. ``This is for people
who are very seriously and terminally ill, not for people with hangnails,''
Turner said.

An outspoken figure familiar to anyone who followed the impeachment of
President Clinton, Barr was one of the House prosecutors in the Senate
trial.

A former federal prosecutor, Barr sponsored an amendment to the city's
annual appropriations bill that outlawed the use of federal money on any
ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana. It passed in August by a
voice vote with little debate. Barr could not be reached for comment for
this article.

The election board held the referendum anyway, because by the time Congress
passed the budget, the ballots already had been printed using the city's
1998 federal appropriation. Barr's amendment prohibited use of 1999 money.

It was the second time in a year that Congress had waded into an AIDS-
related funding issue for the District of Columbia. Last fall Rep. Todd
Tiahrt of Kansas and Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri, both Republicans, were
authors of measures to ban federal money for needle-exchange programs in the
capital for intravenous drug users. Supporters argue that such a program
would cut down on transmission of AIDS and other diseases.

Several states have passed medical marijuana referendums in recent years,
including California, Arizona, Alaska, Nevada, Washington and Oregon.
Supporters say that marijuana use helps ease suffering from AIDS, cancer,
multiple sclerosis, migraine headaches and glaucoma. Medical and scientific
groups have offered qualified endorsements for at least further research.

The National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine concluded last month
that the active substance in marijuana might be ``moderately'' useful in
treating pain but that smoked marijuana had little future as a medicine.

``This was a tough one for me,'' said Schwartz, who backed the referendum
when she ran for mayor last fall. ``But more and more it's proving that
(marijuana) does offer a great deal of relief to those who are suffering. I
have friends going through chemotherapy. This was only thing that allowed
them to keep food down. We know that people who are that sick can often
starve to death.''

Which was exactly what was happening to Michael, the original sponsor of the
initiative. Suffering from AIDS wasting syndrome, he dropped nearly 60
pounds in just a few months. Michael hated marijuana, but in an ironic
punctuation to his own crusade, Turner said, he turned to it for relief.

But the politics that silenced the outcome of the referendum quickly
expanded the debate.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the city's election board, charging
that it violated the voters' First Amendment rights. Even City Hall agreed
and, though it was being sued, filed a brief in support.

Referendum supporters called Barr's amendment a gratuitous slap. Congress,
which has veto power over laws in the district, could have just as easily
rejected the marijuana measure if it passed - and exit polls on Election Day
predicted it would be approved by nearly 70 percent.

``It's an outrage within an outrage within an outrage,'' said Art Spitzer,
legal director for the national capital area office of the ACLU. ``First
D.C. citizens don't get a vote in Congress. Second is that Congress doesn't
let the local D.C. government pass even the most local trivial laws without
review. The third level of outrage is that Congress would interfere this way
within the election process.''

Now everyone waits, as they have for five months, for a federal judge to
rule on the ACLU lawsuit. The decision probably will be appealed.

For Turner, who took up his friend's banner, the delay has had profound and
tragic meaning.

``In my world, in the world of AIDS, where time is crucial, I've lost
probably about five to 10 friends in that time,'' he said. ``I feel a lot of
anger. But I'm clinging to my faith in democracy right now. I have to. I
have no choice.''