". . . and having done all . . . stand firm." Eph. 6:13

Newsletter

The News You Need

Subscribe to The Washington Stand

X
Commentary

Ballot Questions: A Bounce Back to Sanity?

November 9, 2024

America and the world are still reeling a bit from Election Night 2024, and the regrets and recriminations are flowing in with the usual profusion. As always, figuring out the impact of the governorships, state legislatures, and national leadership races decided (or still pending) on Tuesday will take a while. In the meantime, there is much to be learned from the outcome of the direct policy votes taken this year on questions from the redefinition of marriage and legalization of assisted suicide to school choice and drug use. All told, 41 states voted on 146 state constitutional amendments this year, with four more to come on December 7 in Louisiana.

Euthanasia

Perhaps the most significant referendum result occurred in West Virginia, a generally conservative state that voted against abortion in 2018 and elected former Governor Jim Justice to the U.S. Senate in 2024, helping flip that chamber to Republican control. Illustrating the significance of citizen participation, the Mountaineer State voted to ban assisted suicide in the state constitution by a very narrow margin of less than one percent (the result has not yet been formally certified). Laws allowing assisted suicide have made faltering progress in the United States and continue to generate controversy in the Western world, as the practice has taken hold in some liberal jurisdictions and expanded its application to more vulnerable citizens, including children and people struggling with mental health conditions or under economic and social duress.

West Virginia is the first state to ban assisted suicide constitutionally as this civilizational battle continues.

Marriage Redefinition

The definition of marriage was also on the ballot in three states. The votes were by no means pro forma, even though the issue was addressed at the national level by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. The court’s 5-4 decision overturned the laws of the 50 states, including those that had recently approved state constitutional amendments affirming the natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Those amendments, approved by a cumulative majority of nearly two-to-one in the 31 states that approved them, generally remain on the books and could, arguably, be revived by a future Supreme Court’s reversal of Obergefell.

Three states voted this November 5 on whether to repeal the pro-natural marriage amendments and block any impact of a future Supreme Court ruling. The results were pro-repeal in: California, by a margin of 61-39%, Colorado by a margin of 64-36%, and Hawaii by a closer vote of 52-40% (the remainder were blanks or over-votes that count as “no” votes under Hawaii law). The Hawaii referendum question affected a voter-approved provision, unique to Hawaii that did not require man-woman marriage but merely allowed the legislature to so define marriage if it chose to do so.

The votes in these three states further cement the recognition of same-sex marriage created by Obergefell. They illustrate the continuing irony of appeals to “democracy” as the ultimate justification for policy outcomes. When the Supreme Court ruled to require recognition of same-sex marriage in 2015, it did so in the face of widespread popular opposition and by a margin of just one Supreme Court justice. In 2024, three states are relying on popular support to more or less ratify the court’s ruling. Absent a consistent view of the judicial role — which for conservatives has been one of judicial restraint — democracy becomes worthy of respect for liberals only when they agree with its results.

It is worth noting that even in the most liberal jurisdictions of California, Colorado, and Hawaii, four-in-10 voters cast ballots affirming a natural marriage prerogative. Action by the Supreme Court on this issue remains only a remote possibility but at some level a debate continues, as it should in a representative democracy.

School Choice Setbacks

Kentucky’s most prominent referendum was No. 2, a proposal to allow parents to use their share of public funds to go to the state’s private schools. It failed by a nearly two-to-one margin, a reversal of the margin by which the conservative state supported Donald Trump. I live in Kentucky, and the contrast in these outcomes was evident in the weeks leading up to the vote as “Vote No on 2” yard signs predominated. I happened to converse with one citizen who supported private school choice, but he related his concern that public schools not be harmed by any loss of revenue (he and his wife live very modestly and send their kids to private schools. For him it was a conscientious concern).

The form of the referendum was an amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed the Kentucky legislature to debate and adopt alternative measures for financing schools, such as charter schools or a voucher system. All 120 counties in Kentucky voted against the amendment. Republican legislators were generally for the amendment but one of their leaders suggested they were relatively silent on the subject in expectation that it was, as he said, a losing proposition that became “a self-fulfilling prophecy” when legislators declined to speak up for it.

In Nebraska, a pro-school choice proposal with a different funding mechanism and lower cost also went down to defeat. Voters repealed by a 57% to 43% margin a $10 million state-legislature approved program that would have allowed a number of low-income K-12 students to attend private schools in the state. Colorado voters also rejected a measure to create a parental right to school choice in the state.

Marijuana, Mushrooms, and More

In 2024, drug abuse and its potential damage to individuals and society were very much on the ballot. The issue has been brought to the fore most recently by its association with the deadly opioid fentanyl and the lack of border control in the United States. The latest estimate of drug overdose deaths from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is provisionally pegged at just under 100,000 for the year ending May 2024.

Against this background, it can be said that the public is deeply concerned about the devastating toll of drug abuse. In Florida, again aided by the 60% threshold for approval of state constitutional amendments, Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his team successfully staved off a ballot initiative that would have approved recreational marijuana use and conferred massive advantages on a private corporation dominating the trade. Florida voters rejected the amendment by a tally of 56% to 44%, 4% short of passage. This, despite a massive stash of cash from the marijuana industry and the support of Donald Trump, who lives in Florida and stated his support for Amendment 3.

Votes on drug issues were prominent elsewhere. The issue had been recently engaged in liberal Oregon, whose legislature decriminalized possession of small quantities of hard drugs in July 2023. In the wake of devastating outcomes (and horrifying visuals) on city streets in Oregon, the legislature opted last September to recriminalize possession of some of the most dangerous drugs like fentanyl, heroin, and meth.

Besides Florida, South Dakota voted against legalizing marijuana use by a 56.3% to 43.7% margin and North Dakota voted likewise by a five-point margin. Of more import, very liberal Massachusetts voted by a likely final margin of 57% to 43% to reject legalization of psychedelics like psilocybin and psilocin. A Boston Globe editorial board piece from October may have foretold this result when it wrote that the proposal “goes too far” and concluded, “More drugs are not good for any community.”

Crime

One last topic — law and order — deserves attention as it characterizes the results as a whole. As Americans saw with increasing clarity over the past four years, the lack of enforcement of everyday criminal laws has led to one appalling scene after another on the streets of New York City, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Whether it was permissive culture, a tortured view that goes too far in converting the thug into a victim, or a more perfidious values-free politics, many cities in the U.S. were becoming unlivable and unrecognizable.

On November 5, California, still a blue state in its overall politics, approved a measure to restore criminal penalties for drug dealers with prior convictions and for theft involving goods less than $950. The majority in favor was 70% (though just prior to the election Kamala Harris declined to say whether she supported the measure). Los Angeles voters also voted to summarily fire prosecutor George Gascón, the notoriously permissive prosecutor who had led the drive to weaken criminal enforcement in the county.

As local prosecutors tersely described the situation to Fox News, “Crime is illegal again.”

That phrase — “goes too far” — may summarize the lion’s share of the results in 2024. Americans are a tolerant and forgiving people, generally open to appeals to “live and let live.” On questions from males in women’s sports, to unlimited abortion, to drag shows for kids, to street drugs and car break-ins, lawless borders, and shoplifting, growing majorities believe the Democrats have just gone too far and it is time for a bounce back to order and self-restraint. Recreating values from within, in our homes and churches and neighborhoods, remains to be done, but perhaps a turn has been made in the winding road of our national life.

Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.



Amplify Our Voice for Truth