Blackjack and Bras

The voters last week not only picked candidates for office; they also had opportunities to establish policy and make laws, though they were generally in a negative mood and chose not to. Across the nation there were hundreds of voter initiatives and referendums on state, city, county and town ballots. In California the electorate confronted a bewildering array of 17 separate statewide propositions, including one that called for the elimination of all masculine terms from the state constitution (it passed). Connecticut voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment barring sex discrimination identical to the as yet unratified national Equal Rights Amendment. In Colorado environmentalists pushed through a measure requiring voter approval for any future nuclear detonations that might be set off to exploit the state's rich energy reserves. In Massachusetts 24 towns voted on whether or not complete amnesty should be granted to draft dodgers and deserters. The tally: only eight towns approved, but the overall count gave the measure, an expression of local opinion with no force of law, a 93,230-to-88,980 plurality.

Some of the measures were hardly of earth-shattering importance. In Dade County, Fla., a ban on throwaway bottles and cans, favored by environmentalists, was rejected by the voters, while in nearby Cocoa Beach topless bathing was outlawed. South Carolinians regularized the hours of the state's liquor stores, Arkansans spurned an attempt by bankers and businessmen to give the state legislature control over interest rates, and, in the year's biggest victory for Fundamentalism, the citizens of Rush Springs, Okla. (pop. 1,381), decided to outlaw dancing in public. Other proposals and the voters' decisions were of greater significance:

> New Jersey voters, in an upset, decisively rejected an initiative that would have legalized gambling casinos in the state. Advocated by Governor Brendan Byrne as a source of state revenue, the casino idea was supported by Atlantic City businessmen who were hoping that the roulette wheel would restore the seaside resort's fading image. But a citizens' group calling itself Casinos-No Dice, backed by state legislators, law-enforcement officials and clergymen, raised the specter of an invasion of the casinos by organized crime. Though the pro-casino forces outspent Casinos-No Dice by some 20 to 1 and early opinion polls showed the measure winning easily, it was voted down 2 to 1. Muttered one Atlantic City promoter: "I guess we'll have to go back to pushing beaches."

> In California environmentalist groups lost a bitter fight to stop construction of a dam on the Stanislaus River in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The 62-story-high structure was designed to prevent yearly flooding of the lower Stanislaus. Backers of the project cite other benefits like some 2.4 million acre-feet of irrigation water and enough nonpolluting hydroelectric power to supply a city of 200,000 people. The problem is that the dam will also destroy some nine miles of spectacular white water. An organization called Friends of the River, which was formed to fight the dam, persuasively argued that flood control could be accomplished by a dam one-fifth the size of the proposed structure without ruining the stretches of white water. There is, in addition, considerable controversy over how much irrigation water is really needed in the region. As for the much-vaunted hydroelectric power, Rob Caughlan, director of the initiative campaign, argues, "There is no city of 200,000 out there in an ark waiting for the dam to be built." Largely because of a well-financed and, many feel, intentionally confusing campaign by farmers, land developers, construction unions and contractors, the initiative lost. The dam will be built.

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