235 VOTER REFERENDUMS TEST MOOD OF AMERICA

PORTLAND, Ore. -- In Oregon, the issue is the privacy rights of
adoptees. In Washington it is affirmative action. In Alaska and Hawaii
it is same sex-marriage. In South Carolina it is a question of finally
saying that marriage between a black person and a white person is
legal. And in Ohio it is the fate of a bird with a mournful song.

On Tuesday, voters in 44 states will decide 61 initiatives that could
become laws or in some cases amend state constitutions. In addition,
174 referendums have been placed on ballots by state
legislatures.

The initiative process itself is being considered in six states,
primarily as a result of questions placed before voters by state
legislators who see the use of ballot measures to make laws as a
threat to their domain.

Oregon and Arizona have the greatest number of initiatives this year,
each state presenting voters with 14.

In Oregon, in addition to a medical marijuana measure and a separate
issue on campaign finance reform, three other initiatives have drawn
wide attention.

One would guarantee the right of an adopted person to have access to
an original birth certificate once he or she reaches the age of 21.
Current law dictates that a new birth certificate be issued upon
adoption; the original certificate is sealed and can be obtained only
through court order.

In a state where measures to protect the environment usually are
wildly popular, a proposal that would further limit the number of
trees per acre that can be harvested appears headed for defeat,
primarily because it could lead to the loss of nearly half the jobs in
Oregon's timber industry. Mainstream environmentalists failed to
support the proposition because they see it as too radical.

Further, should they approve Measure 60 Tuesday, Oregonians would
never go to the polls again for biennial primary and general
elections. The measure would require voting to be done by mail.

In neighboring Washington, voters will decide whether to eliminate the
use of racial and gender preferences for state jobs, contracts and
admission to state universities and colleges.

As California did two years ago, Washington appears poised to abolish
affirmative action programs. Opinion polls indicate that the measure,
supported by money from Ward Connerly, the Sacramento businessman who
spearheaded the campaign in California, is ahead by about 12
percentage points. Experts say it could give a major boost to national
efforts to end affirmative action.

"People are watching this one very closely," said Dane Waters,
president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, a non-profit
Washington group that monitors trends in the ballot measure process.
"They think that if this works in a state like Washington then it
could be an indication of a national mood."

Term-limit measures, the darlings of the initiative process for many
conservatives throughout the 1990s, are on ballots in four states.
This year, however, proponents are taking a slightly different approach.

In three of the four states--Arizona, Colorado and Idaho--the
proposals call for voters to demand that candidates be asked to sign a
voluntary pledge to limit themselves to three terms in the U.S. House
and two terms in the Senate. The measures also would require that a
notation about whether the candidate signed the pledge be made next to
the candidate's name on the ballot.

Paul Jacobs, executive director of U.S. Term Limits, a
Washington-based organization that champions the issue, said this
trend is designed to hold individual candidates responsible for their
views on term limits by taking the pledge before they run.

Jacobs and others noted that term-limit initiatives have become a
lightning rod for many elected officials who see voters making laws as
a threat to their power.

In Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota and Montana, there are measures
designed to make it more difficult to legislate via initiative by
limiting corporate contributions to such campaigns, requiring
two-thirds majorities for passage and barring non-residents from
introducing initiative proposals.

There are two measures in Arizona that would make it harder for the
governor and the state legislature to reverse voters' decisions at the
ballot box.

"Who is really in charge?" asked initiative supporter Jacobs. "Is this
a nation where people rule or is this a nation where people are ruled?"

Echoing a societal and moral question that voters addressed in Oregon
two years ago, Michigan residents will consider a ballot measure that
would permit doctor-assisted suicide. A complicated, 12-page
proposition, the Michigan measure would place far more controls on the
process by which terminally ill people could obtain the drugs
necessary to end their lives than the Oregon law does.

According to Robert Moreillon, campaign manager for Merian's Friends
Inc., the group sponsoring the initiative, the measure had been
favored by about 60 percent of Michigan voters until a coalition lead
by the Roman Catholic Church launched a media blitz aimed at defeating
the proposal.

"It has flip-flopped," said Moreillion, who heads the group named
after Merian Frederick, a woman from Ann Arbor who took her own life
with the help of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Moreillon said that 60 percent of
those polled now said they would vote against the measure.

In the year since the Oregon law finally cleared its last court
challenge, eight people have taken their lives using the new system.
The average age of those ending their lives with the help of a
physician was 71.

The issue of late-term abortion goes before the voters in Colorado and
Washington. The measures are worded differently.

Amendment 11 in Colorado defines the procedure as: ". . . an abortion
during which the person performing the abortion deliberately and
intentionally causes to be delivered into the vagina a living human
fetus for the purpose of performing any procedure the person knows
will kill the fetus."

Washington's Initiative 694 talks about killing a fetus in the
"process of birth" and goes on to define that term as: ". . . the
point in time when the mother's cervix has become dilated, the
membrane of the amniotic sac has ruptured, and any part of the fetus
has passed from the uterus, or womb into the birth canal."

Some experts suggested that the wording of both measures could be
interpreted to prohibit other forms of late-term abortion besides that
procedure referred to as partial birth abortion.

In California, usually the nation's bellwether in the initiative
process, 1998 has turned out to be a tame year. There is an initiative
to increase taxes on cigarettes to pay for early child-development and
smoking-prevention programs, a class-size reduction proposition and
proposal that would expand Indian gaming.

There also is a measure that would do away with the open-primary
election process that voters approved by initiative last year. Under
that system voters can vote for a candidate no matter what the voter's
party affiliation. The measure was placed on the ballot by the
legislature with the support of Gov. Pete Wilson to clear the way for
an increased role for California in the presidential primary elections
starting in 2000.

Wilson recently signed a bill into law that moves the California
primary up to the beginning of March to give the country's most
populous state an early, powerful voice in deciding who the
presidential nominees would be. Because the rules of both the
Republican and Democratic parties require those voting in presidential
primaries to be only party members, the new California law must be
changed.

Thirty-one years after the Supreme Court declared miscegenation laws
unconstitutional, voters in South Carolina will be asked to formally
amend the state constitution by deleting the provision that prohibits
marriage between blacks and whites.

"It is a bit of housekeeping," said Jennie Drage, a research analyst
at the National Conference of State Legislatures. "They have not
enforced the law in 30 years."

And in Ohio, voters hold the fate of the mourning dove in their
hands.

In an effort to save the pigeon-size bird, animal rights groups have
placed the measure on the state ballot, called Issue 1. If approved it
would prohibit the popular sport of hunting the dove.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry