Election '82: Freezing Nukes, Banning Bottles

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ENVIRONMENT. Four Western states—Arizona, California, Colorado and Washington—decided that their celebrated landscapes were not being sullied by discarded cans and bottles, and defeated measures that would have required a 5¢ deposit and packaging modification. Opponents of the bottle measures were lavishly financed by the beer, bottling, soft-drink, glass and canning industries. Such proposals, they argued, would increase the cost of beer and soft drinks, undermine successful voluntary recycling programs and spawn a plague of cockroaches in sticky stacks of retrieved bottles and cans. In California, opponents of a measure calling for a 5¢ deposit on all beer and soft-drink containers spent nearly $6 million, while supporters worked with a meager $800,000. Lamented Ross Pumfrey, chairman of Californians for Recycling and Litter Clean-Up: "It was a classic example of what money and advertising can do."

CRIME. Across the nation, the message was simple and direct: get tough with criminals. Massachusetts voters, 3 to 2, empowered the state legislature to restore the death penalty, which has not been used in the state since 1947. In Colorado, voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment expanding the types of cases in which judges can refuse bail to accused criminals. In Arizona, citizens chose to deny bail to any defendant for several reasons, among them, if the accused is considered to be a danger to society by the arraigning judge. In Illinois, voters decided, by a 5-to-l landslide, to give judges the power to deny bail to criminal defendants facing possible life sentences.

Fear of crime was the main factor behind the sweeping California proposition that would have required the registration of handguns and virtually proscribed the sale of new ones after April 1983. And fear of crime was one of the principal reasons that Californians soundly defeated that proposal. Led by the implacable and powerful National Rifle Association, opponents of the measure mustered awesome financial firepower: they raised $5.7 million, compared with the $1.8 million spent by supporters of the bill. A gun-toting Roy Rogers protested against the plan, and opponents of the measure handed out a memento pin constructed from a brass .357 Magnum cartridge. Nor is the notion that regulation of firearms is un-American limited to the West. Citizens in New Hampshire voted overwhelmingly "to affirm . . . the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state."

Of the 27 ballot measures around the country dealing with taxes, among the most significant were Oregon's rejection of a Proposition 13 clone and Missouri's approval of a 10 sales tax earmarked for education. In Ohio, on the other hand, only two of 34 school districts approved the raising of local taxes to help their schools. Gambling measures were defeated in Montana and South Dakota, while pari-mutuel betting got the starting bell in Minnesota.