Unfortunately, in this campaign season, these issues were rarely the subject of sharply delineated debate between candidates for public office. Instead, they grace the ballots of roughly two-thirds of the states as initiatives and proposed constitutional amendments, to be decided directly by voters.
Politicians find such issues too hot to handle.
Instead, they prefer to migrate to the safe center, mouthing platitudes about family values and saving Social Security. The growth of initiatives is the sad result of the deterioration of serious public-policy debate, both at the national and state level. After years of declining use, initiatives made a comeback in 1978, when California voters approved Proposition 13, which mandated local tax relief. Today voters in 44 states and the District of Columbia face 61 citizen-sponsored initiatives and 174 amendments and bond issues, according to M. Dane Waters, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute. By contrast, voters in Michigan today face a 12-page proposition defining the process by which terminally ill persons can legally obtain drugs to end their lives.