What's on Your State Ballot?

Editor's note: Reprinted from the Summer 2008 issue of Ms. magazine, now on newsstands.

If a "definition of personhood" initiative gets passed in Colorado this November, you might be investigated if you experience a miscarriage.

If an initiative to end affirmative action is passed in Arizona this fall, you may lose business if you're a woman who receives government contracts.

If a marriage-discrimination initiative passes in California and you're a lesbian newlywed, you'll have to cut short the honeymoon.

In the November election, voters will be deciding whether to roll back equal-opportunity programs for women and people of color, discriminate against gays and lesbians in marriage and adoption, cut public education and threaten women's health care. The big question is whether voters will buy what these ballot initiatives are selling.

According to public opinion research conducted for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center this year, voters are heading into the election season with serious concerns about the country and a strong feeling that it is a rudderless boat. Perhaps most disconcerting, voters feel America is falling behind, and that the next generation is unlikely to have it better than this generation does. The research also shows that voters want to address the big problems the country faces.

Unfortunately, many right-wing-backed ballot initiatives don't give voters the solutions they're looking for. Instead, conservatives are using these initiatives as divisive tactics to try to distract voters. A good example is California businessman Ward Connerly's efforts to roll back equal opportunity in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma (see Ms., Winter 2008). Connerly's initiatives would rewrite state constitutions to ban affirmative-action programs for women and people of color. But the drive for these ballot measures does not necessarily come from within these states: Connerly has been using mercenary signature-gatherers and funds collected by his California organization from undisclosed donors. To date, he's failed to gain enough support in Missouri to qualify for the ballot, had to withdraw his petitions in Oklahoma because of signature fraud and faces a lawsuit over 69,000 potentially fraudulent signatures collected in Colorado. In Arizona and Nebraska, Connerly has submitted his petitions and is awaiting approval to place the initiative on the ballot.

In the arena of women's reproductive rights, the right wing is continuing its assault this year with anti-choice ballot initiatives in four states: California, Colorado, Montana and South Dakota. Californians are being asked to pass a parental notification measure that has already failed twice; South Dakotans will be asked to approve an only slightly less draconian version of an abortion ban that failed in 2006. The "definition of personhood" initiative in Colorado -- which seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade by redefining personhood as the moment of fertilization -- could outlaw certain forms of birth control and ban or restrict common fertility treatments in which multiple eggs are fertilized but only some are introduced into the mother's womb. A supporter of a similar, failed Montana initiative suggested that women could even be investigated to see what they might have done to cause their miscarriages.

Finally, in California, an initiative has qualified for the ballot that would rewrite the constitution and overturn the recent court decision that ruled gay marriage was constitutional. If passed, only marriage between a man and a woman would be valid or recognized in California. Some believe that this issue will put California into play for John McCain in November by turning out conservative votes, but progressives are energized to protect the court's decision, and public opinion continues to move against barring marriage for gay and lesbian couples.