Election '82: Freezing Nukes, Banning Bottles

Ballots list a bumper-sticker crop of 237 questions in 42 states

Not since the Depression had Americans used the mechanisms of initiative and referendum, those venerable tools of direct democracy, in greater numbers or with wider impact. From cracking down on crime to denying electroshock therapy in Berkeley, Calif., there were 237 statewide ballot measures in 42 states and the District of Columbia. California fielded the most, a bumper-sticker crop of 15.

Unlike the spate of ballot measures in 1980, this year's proposals raised issues that were somewhat more liberal than conservative in intent. The trickle of tax-revolt measures that followed after Proposition 13 was approved in California in 1978 seems nearly to have dried up. Indeed, more than the election of a candidate, referendums and initiatives defined voter feeling on specific issues, and citizens were most vocal about nuclear arms, the quality of the environment and crime.

NUCLEAR FREEZE. By far the most common issue was the proposal for a bilateral freeze of the nuclear-arms race. In the closest thing to a national-issue vote in U.S. history, an estimated 10.8 million voters, out of some 18 million who expressed a preference on the issue, cast ballots advocating a freeze. Although the measures were not legally binding, the Administration opposed the movement on the grounds that a freeze would leave the U.S. in a position inferior to that of the Soviet Union. President Reagan had even argued that the campaign was inspired by people who "want the weakening of America." But in proposals that appeared on the ballots in 39 areas, ranging from individual cities and counties to nine states, the concept triumphed in all but three: one county in Arkansas, another in Colorado and the state of Arizona. The freeze won decisively in Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia, and was narrowly approved in California. The texts of the measures varied some, but the spirit was the same: most called for immediate negotiations for a verifiable freeze in the production, testing and deployment of all nuclear weapons, missiles and delivery systems. In addition to supporting the freeze, Montana citizens voted against basing the MX missile anywhere in the state. Although voters in the city of Denver advocated a nuclear freeze, a statewide constitutional amendment aimed at moving or shutting down the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant near Denver was handily defeated.

Other nuclear issues were on the ballots in several states. In Massachusetts, voters backed a proposal that would require a referendum before any new low-level nuclear-waste site or power plant could be established. But nuclear power, a whipping boy in recent years, fared well in Maine, which rejected a measure that would have closed down the state's only functioning nuclear-power plant. Idaho voters, meanwhile, required the legislature to seek voter approval before endorsing construction of nuclear-power facilities.