Other Emotional Issues on Ballots Nationwide : Five States Are Apparently Ready to Adopt Lotteries

Voters in at least five states appeared ready Tuesday to approve lotteries, joining the District of Columbia and 22 other states that use games of chance to raise money for local services and overcome losses of tax money.

The gambling propositions were among 226 initiatives on the ballot in 43 states. They included some of the day’s more emotional issues--among them state spending on abortions and toxic waste disposal--and reflected a popular trend to bypass elected officials in favor of letting the electorate decide individual controversial issues.

Four of the states where lottery initiatives were on the ballot--Kansas, Montana and North and South Dakota--have been hurt by falling agricultural prices, and voters apparently saw gambling as an easy way to raise money without increasing taxes. Results from North Dakota were inconclusive Tuesday night but voters were backing the initiatives in the three other states.

Against Casino Gambling

Voters in a fifth state, Florida, approved a lottery Tuesday, but for the second time since 1978 voted against Las Vegas-style casino gambling. A lottery initiative also was being backed in early returns in Idaho, but observers said it might eventually fail because of opposition from the large Mormon population.

Several of the most controversial propositions were to be decided in Oregon, where voters historically have been unpredictable and willing to buck national trends. The initiatives on the ballot there included tax and abortion questions and a proposal to shut down the state’s only nuclear power plant.

Oregonians, whose state in 1973 became the first to decriminalize possession of small quantities of marijuana, overwhelmingly defeated a measure that would have allowed adults to grow and possess the plant for private use. The vote appeared to mirror a growing anti-drug mood in the nation.

‘They’re Not Stupid’

Supporters of the measure said it would take drug money out of the hands of underworld dealers and would merely make legal what is already a widely accepted practice. The opposition contended the measure would encourage the use of drugs and make the jobs of law enforcement officers more difficult.

“Oregonians are independent, but they’re not stupid,” said state Rep. Paul Phillips, who worked to defeat the measure.

Another initiative in Oregon would establish the nation’s first nuclear-free zone and phase out the local production of nuclear weapons and their components by 1990. Critics argued that Measure 16 could not prevent nuclear war and was largely symbolic, because only 120 jobs in electro-mechanical assemblies, which involve no radioactive health hazards, would be affected.

In Rhode Island, a heavily Catholic state, voters defeated by more than 3 to 2 a measure that would have banned state-financed abortions, except when pregnancy endangered a woman’s life. Similar propositions were also losing in Massachusetts and Oregon, while in Arkansas an anti-abortion measure that declared fetuses have a right to life was being evenly contested with about half of the state’s 2,815 precincts reporting. In Arkansas and Rhode Island, advocates proposed banning abortions entirely if the Supreme Court reverses its 1973 decision confirming a woman’s right to choose abortion.

Better Test Case

Anti-abortion sentiment is strong in Arkansas, and right-to-life proponents said before the election that they expected to win there. But they believe Oregon--where about half the electorate lives in the three counties around Portland, a relatively liberal city--will be a better test case of the movement’s national strength.

In Vermont, a proposition that would add the equal rights amendment to the state constitution--as 16 states already have--was failing in early returns, although 80% of voters once supported it in pre-election polls. In Colorado an initiative requiring a vote on any new tax or tax hike was losing while tax-cap measures were undecided in Oregon and Massachusetts. Montanans were favoring a measure that would freeze property taxes but another initiative that would eliminate all property taxes seemed likely to lose

Voters in Idaho were deciding whether to repeal the state’s right-to-work law, which makes it illegal to require an employee to pay union dues to keep his job. President Reagan and actor Charlton Heston have both appealed to voters to retain the 18-month-old law, which was strongly opposed by the labor movement.

Right-to-work proponents--those who say union membership should not be a condition of employment--said Idaho needs to keep the law if it is to attract new industry. Their campaign depicted “powerful union bosses” controlling organized labor as responsible for a serious decline in the state’s silver mining.

Wastes Highly Visible

Labor leaders and other critics countered that the law has led to lower wages and fewer benefits for Idaho workers. They said it permits non-union workers to “freeload” on union members by not paying dues to the unions that have won higher wages and more benefits at the negotiating table.

Like California and Oregon, five other states had ballot initiatives dealing with hazardous wastes. In Washington, one proposal would prohibit the federal government from locating a nuclear-waste dump in that state. Massachusetts voters were backing a proposition calling for a timetable for waste cleanup, and New Jerseyans and New Yorkers were supporting bond issues of $200 million and $1.2 billion respectively for various environmental cleanup efforts.

Voters in and around the predominantly black Boston suburb of Roxbury rejected 3 to 1 a non-binding referendum on forming a separate city, to be named Mandela for the jailed South African black leader, Nelson Mandela. The proposal had been opposed by most of the city’s black and white leaders.