Voters Get Last Word

Countless words--heartfelt and hired, meant to enlighten and meant to obscure--have gusted around the 15 statewide propositions on Tuesday’s ballot.

Voters soon will have the final word, putting a quick stop to the winds by quietly pushing styluses. Before they do, some questions not often posed during the long issue campaigns bear asking:

Are the propositions more than pet concerns that interest groups and ideologues have succeeded in elevating to the status of ballot questions? Do they really touch on the lives and direct interests of voters, and if so, how?

To get some indication of the answers, The Times invited seven voters to talk at length about the ballot issues and their own lives. All seven, most of whom live in the San Fernando Valley, had participated in a recent Times Poll. What they said has been condensed but remains in their own words.

The ballot measures they focused on as particularly meaningful included Proposition 205, which would provide $700 million in bonds to build and renovate county jails and juvenile detention facilities; Proposition 206, which would authorize $400 million in bonds for home and farm loans to military veterans (the Cal-Vet program); Proposition 209, which would abolish affirmative action in state and local government employment and state university admissions; Proposition 210, which would raise the minimum wage in the state to $5.75 an hour by March 1998; Propositions 214 and 216, which would provide closer government regulation of health maintenance organizations; and Proposition 215, which would legalize marijuana for medical use via doctor’s prescription.

Despite poring over the state-provided voter information pamphlet, all of those interviewed admitted to at least some confusion about what the ballot issues are truly about and blame misleading pro and con advertising.

Many also voiced resentment of the initiative process itself for their being called upon to make judgments about matters they don’t always entirely understand.

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Edmund Chassman, 70, is a retired musician and high school teacher who lives in Granada Hills.

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I’m a little anti-initiative, if you want me to be frank with you. I would say it’s for the state Assembly to do and the state Senate, and not only that, I don’t feel qualified, I really don’t. And I consider myself at least average in education, a college graduate, and yet to wade through them and reach an intelligent decision and push aside all the propaganda and emotional barrage that we get in the ads, I just don’t think the people can make a fair decision on these.

I think the information we get on the radio ads and the television ads is probably filled with half-truths and appeals to the emotions. I find it very, very difficult to really sift these things out.

I’m going to vote yes on 215 [legalizing marijuana for medical use]. First of all, I don’t see that it would be at all harmful to the general population. I don’t think it’s going to make drug addicts or marijuana addicts out of me or my grandchildren. It would just make it available, as I understand it, on a doctor’s prescription. But I just don’t see any harm in it at all. And if it does some good . . .

My first wife died of cancer. There was a good deal of suffering there. It could have been much worse, I suppose. She had uterus cancer. Sixteen years ago she died; she was first stricken 25 years ago. We thought she was cured because she passed the five-year mark where they said, “You’ve got it beat.” But it showed up again. When it recurred, it lasted a little over a year. She started on chemotherapy but rejected it because of the nausea, and I guess this is something that the use of marijuana is supposed to counteract.

It’s that, and also I think my general liberal attitude. I’ve never used drugs myself. I know a couple of my kids did, unbeknownst to me--well, sort of unbeknownst to me. You know, growing up in their generation it was pretty hard not to. As far as I know they tried marijuana and got over it.

Minimum wage I also will vote for. One of my granddaughters just started college, and she was working as a waitress her last year of high school, and I imagine that was minimum-wage work. And her brother worked at Arby’s.

The issue touches on me that way, but I’m more concerned with people trying to raise a family on that kind of money. The propaganda says that it’s mostly kids that are working at that level, but I heard otherwise, that a large percentage of family breadwinners are working at minimum-wage jobs. I feel that anybody who works a 40-hour week should not end up below the poverty line. And if I have to pay higher for services and food at the grocery store, then that’s a price I’m willing to pay just to live in this country of ours and see it prosper.

But even if the vote on all the issues goes against me, I’d forget about it the next day. I’m usually on the wrong side of initiatives. I don’t think that any of them will have a direct effect on me right now.