Washington Wednesday: Explaining ballot measures

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 18th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Most of the attention in politics is rightly on the top of the ballot, who’ll be our next president? But toward the bottom voters find politics much closer to home.

MAST: You can find what’s on the ballot in your state in our newly expanded online election center wng.org/election24. More on that in a moment.

EICHER: The big local issues common to many ballots across the country this November are election integrity, drug policy, and abortion.

Today on Washington Wednesday: three WORLD reporters unpack the choices.

MAST: Up first, Life beat reporter Leah Savas to talk about the abortion measures. Good morning Leah!

LEAH SAVAS: Good morning!

MAST: Give us a quick overview, if you could. How many states will have abortion measures on the ballot, and would you label them mostly pro abortion or pro life?

SAVAS: So there are 10 states that have abortion on the ballot as of now for this November. Five of them are blue states and five of them are red states. So we have Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, New York and Nevada as our blue states, and then the red states are Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota. So there are actually 11 total ballot measures in these 10 states. Nebraska has two abortion related measures that will be on the ballot, and one of them is actually sponsored by pro-life groups. The other one is sponsored by pro-abortion groups. But that one pro-life ballot measure in Nebraska is the only pro-life ballot measure of all of these abortion related measures.

MAST: Can you tell us a little bit about the range of extremity on these measures?

SAVAS: Yeah, so pro-life groups in general see all of these as pretty extreme, regardless of the language, just because of all the loopholes in the language. A lot of the measures will say that they will establish a right to abortion up to the point of viability, but they do make such broad exceptions after the point of viability for like mental health or just health in general that's undefined, that it can be defined for to being anything. For instance, like, if you're stressed as a mother and you and you want an abortion, then you know, technically, could that qualify as a mental health exception a reason to approve the abortion. But there are a couple amendments that don't even use that language of viability or establish that so-called limit. For instance, Colorado and Maryland, they just assert a right to abortion in any circumstance, regardless of the point in pregnancy. It's just full stop, this would establish a right to abortion in the state constitution. So I would say those two are probably on the more extreme end, just because they don't even have the language of restrictions.

MAST: So what about pro life pushback on these? Leah, what's notable about the campaigns that you've seen?

SAVAS: I would say that most of the pro life pushback has happened, actually, before these amendments have even made it to ballots. So in states like Missouri and Florida, there were court challenges to try to prevent these from even getting to the ballots in the first place. So I think it's because pro-lifers know that once they get to the point of yes, this is going to be on the ballot, they can't outspend these pro-abortion groups who are very well funded. And I actually talked to Aaron Baer from the Center for Christian virtue in Ohio, he was a part of the campaign against the pro abortion amendment in that state, and he said this:

AARON BAER: Just lining up against Planned Parenthood and say, "We're gonna, we're gonna go toe to toe on TV advertising and try to match you on that," we just can't do it. They have so much more money. I mean, they just, they flooded the airwaves with ads.

SAVAS: So Aaron was pretty, actually skeptical about where voters fall on this issue of abortion when it comes to ballot measures. He was saying that a voter is presented with the question of, "Do you want to allow abortion for any reason or not allow abortion at all?" that they will tend to choose all abortion. So here's what he had to say.

BAER: It was jarring. You know, one out of three weekly attending churchgoers voted yes on the abortion amendment. Right? We need to be sober minded about where the culture is.

MAST: There’s a lot more tied up in that. Well, Leah Savas is WORLD’s Life Beat reporter…Leah thank you!

SAVAS: Thanks for having me on, Lindsay.

EICHER: On to voting. Several states are considering issues like ranked-choice voting … but the big issue on the ballot here is constitutional amendments prohibiting noncitizens from voting.

Leo Briceno from WORLD’s Washington Bureau is here now. Welcome, Leo.

LEO BRICENO: Hey, good morning.

EICHER: Let's start with the citizenship question, Leo. Of course, it’s illegal for noncitizens to vote, but there’s clearly more to this. What’s the issue, Leo?

BRICENO: Yeah. So there are two big questions that we really need to divide out when looking at this issue: there is the federal question, and then there's what are states doing about that federal question. So national voter law says that only citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections, right? Because of the statutes laid out in the National Voter Registration Act, also known as the Motor Voter Registration Act of 1993. Any application get this for a driving license also has to double for federal voting registration. But the issue with that the Republicans are picking up on and are pointing out, especially in the House of Representatives, is that the bar to get a driver's license is lower than that of actually requiring proof of citizenship. So when you go into the DMV and you get your license, basically all you're asked to do in order to attest to your citizenship is to check a box and say, Yes, I am a citizen of the United States. And without some sort of higher bar, or actually a more enforceable bar, Republicans fear that people that really shouldn't be voting in national elections, specifically noncitizens in this case, can walk into a DMV, check a box and walk out registered to vote. And so they want to implement something called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, otherwise known as the SAVE Act, that would require states to verify proof of citizenship before registering people to vote. So it'd be kind of an amendment to that older law, and that would just be, you know, states would have to require either a birth certificate or a passport or some other sort of proof before they go on to register people to vote.

EICHER: So that’s the federal level…what about states? How many states are putting this before voters this year?

BRICENO: There are eight states, Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Wisconsin that are all considering adding a requirement in their state constitution that says, hey, just to be clear, only citizens are allowed to vote in our elections. And so it's a reflection of but a separate conversation than the one that's going on at the federal level.

EICHER: Leo Briceno covers politics from WORLD’s Washington Bureau. Thanks.

BRICENO: You bet. Thanks.

MAST: Turning now to drug policy. Despite health warnings on the dangers of marijuana use. Twenty four states have legalized it, and another 14 have approved marijuana for medicinal purposes. This fall, legalization will be on the ballot for still more states.

Here now with more is WORLD executive editor for news, Lynde Langdon. Good morning, Lynde.

LYNDE LANGDON: Good morning.

MAST: Lynde, tell us first, which states are voting on marijuana initiatives and what are the stages of legalization in those states?

LANGDON: Lindsay, there are fewer states that are voting on marijuana usage than in years past, partly because there was a big wave of legalization that was successful that's now crested. But this year, there are three states voting on recreational marijuana use, that's North Dakota and South Dakota and Florida. And then in Nebraska, they're voting on medicinal marijuana use for the very first time.

MAST: Well, one of the big stories this year is that marijuana measure in Florida. It's got a massive war chest. Donald Trump actually endorsed it. He says it's a waste of taxpayer dollars to book adults who possess marijuana for personal use. Lindy, there are a lot of people who say lowering restrictions on marijuana is a net good. How has that played out, though, in the states that have legalized it?

LANGDON: Well, the arguments for legalizing recreational marijuana use mostly come from criminal justice advocates who say that harsh drug laws have resulted in over-incarceration and unfair punishment, particularly for poor people. And while it's true that incarceration rates have gone down in states that have legalized recreational marijuana use, there are a host of other issues that are cropping up really around the country.

What we're seeing is that marijuana use in general across the country is at an all time high among all demographics and age groups, and this is not a drug without risks. The risks involve a lot of emergency room trips and psychiatric hospital admissions that are on the rise for people who are having psychotic breaks due to potent marijuana use. There are other violent illnesses that people can come down with on this drug. It is addictive, and there's always the risk that once somebody uses marijuana legally, they then will turn to the illicit sale of marijuana to continue their habit and be exposed to all kinds of terrible addictive substances, the main one being fentanyl. So the idea that this helps a small portion of our society, it might be true, but the greater impact is that people have changed their attitudes, and they think that using marijuana is risk free and it's not.

Addie Offereins, one of our news reporters, spoke about this with Jim Kinyon. He's a leader in Catholic Social Services in South Dakota, and he says that the marijuana industry's claims about people getting arrested for possession of small amounts of weed ignores bigger problems.

JIM KINYON: There is not a single person locked up in the state of South Dakota for a minor amount of marijuana. Now, if they were on marijuana and they killed somebody in a traffic accident, they're probably in jail. If they beat their wife, they might be in jail, right? They had a full psychotic break. They probably end up in our psych ward. And I did a number of those evaluations, and the only drug on board was was marijuana. This is not our grandpa's marijuana.

MAST: So a lot of things playing together there tell us a little bit about other substances, like psychedelic drugs. Are there states taking those on as far as legalizing them?

LANGDON: Yes, this year, Massachusetts has a question on the ballot to authorize use of a group of psychedelic drugs. They're made from naturally occurring substances, most of the time, referred to as "magic mushrooms," but it's a hallucinogenic drug called psilocybin, and Massachusetts is considering allowing use of it at home and eventually in a network of therapy centers. Oregon and Colorado have already legalized the use of psilocybin, and it looks like this may be the next big thing when it comes to the decriminalization of drugs.

EICHER: Lynde, before we go, tell us a bit more about WORLD’s election guides…What's the goal there, and what can people find on the website?

LANGDON: Well, our reporters have done election guides in the past for states that were getting a lot of attention. Maybe they were swing states, or they had just national appeal in some of the things they were considering. And we got great reader feedback on those, and lots of people saying, well, what about my state? I want to know what's happening in my state. So this year, we're putting together guides for all 50 of our states, and we're just about finished compiling those. You can check them out at wng.org/election24, and the state guides have information about all of the key statewide races, ballot initiatives, federal elections, and even some do's and don'ts of voting in those states.

MAST: That’s it for this week’s Washington Wednesday.

Lynde Langdon is WORLD’s executive editor for news. Lynde, thank you so much for your time today.

LANGDON: You're welcome.

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