RESULTS OF MEDICAL-MARIJUANA REFERENDUM BLOCKED

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 in November to decide whether
marijuana should be legalized in the District of Columbia for medical
uses, such as for AIDS victims. 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," City Councilwoman Carol Schwartz said.

Few can point to something like this ever happening before, where 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."

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 of "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.

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. Barr could not
be reached for comment.

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.

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.

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.