ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060082
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
Putting a polarizing campaign behind them, Californians moved decisively Tuesday to dismantle state affirmative action programs, passing a ballot measure that bans racial and sex preferences in public hiring, contracting and education.
Early returns showed overwhelming support for the hotly debated Proposition 209. With 9 percent of the vote counted, the measure was leading 64 percent to 36 percent.
``I've been working for 40 years, and the only discrimination I've seen has been toward me because of affirmative action,'' Andy Porter, 67, said as he voted in Long Beach. ``They say, `Today we have to hire a black person or a brown person,' even though the other person may be more qualified.''
California voters also approved legalizing the cultivation, possession and use of marijuana for medical purposes.
Marijuana also got a nod of approval in Arizona on Tuesday when voters passed a ballot measure legalizing use of the drug for medical purposes, a proposal that drew the scorn of three former presidents.
Pro-pot forces included a nurse who spoke compellingly of how the drug had eased her husband's pain before his death from cancer. Opponents included former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush, who urged voters to reject legalization for any purpose.
Arizonans also expanded gambling on Indian reservations and voted to allow 15-year-olds to be tried as adults for murder, rape and armed robbery.
Florida's sugar growers, under attack for polluting the Everglades with fertilizer runoff, spent big to defeat a proposed penny-per-pound tax that would have helped clean up the fabled ``river of grass.'' Sugar companies and growers spent in excess of $23 million to influence the vote; supporters spent at least $13 million.
Gambling got the boot in Ohio, where voters rejected the notion of stringing riverboat casinos along the Ohio River and the Lake Erie shore.
And crime victims got special recognition in Indiana and Oklahoma, where they will be given greater participation in court proceedings. Six other states were voting on similar measures.
Across the country, Americans helped steer their states' futures at the polls, voting on hundreds of ballot measures that could become law, including at least 90 citizen initiatives.
Among those attracting the keenest national attention was an attempt to enshrine into the Colorado constitution the rights of parents ``to direct and control the upbringing, education, values and discipline of their children.'' Early returns showed the parental rights measure trailing badly.
Maine's northern woods - still vast but shrinking - gained some protection against harsh logging practices but not the all-out ban on clear-cutting that environmentalists fought so hard for.
Maine's vote whether to ban clear-cutting on millions of acres of forest turned into the most expensive referendum in the state's history, with paper companies spending more than $5 million to defeat it.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines KEYWORDS: ELECTIONby CNB