Ballot initiatives Change we can do without

Economist
Novermber 4, 2010

Even the supporters of California’s Proposition 19, the historic ballot measure that would have legalised marijuana, seemed surprised earlier this year when polls showed the Yes campaign in the lead. Usually, they cautioned, voters become more conservative, in the sense of cautious, as election day nears—and so it proved in this case. California will not legalise cannabis after all.

In practical terms it won’t matter much, because another law, signed this year by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (who opposed Proposition 19), in effect decriminalises cannabis, making the penalty for owning a bit of pot equivalent to a traffic ticket. But the defeat of the most prominent of this year’s initiatives set a trend: voters across the country were sceptical of sweeping changes. Those in Arizona and South Dakota, for instance, said no to legalising even medical marijuana.

Small-c conservatism may also explain why voters in the state officially called the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations woke up the next morning, having rejected dropping the Providence Plantations (with their whiff of slavery) from its name. Voters in Arkansas, South Carolina and Tennessee amended their state constitutions with the explicit right to hunt and fish, but that hardly changes life in these states. (Arizonans voted No on the same matter, perhaps seeing no need.) Voters in Kansas decided to put the right to bear arms into their state constitution, which is more redundant than radical.

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