California turned its back on affirmative action. Florida rejected a sugar tax to clean up the Everglades. And pot smokers puffed celebratory joints in California and Arizona after marijuana was legalized for medical purposes.
Across the nation Tuesday, voters decided on ballot measures ranging from securities fraud to logging and leg traps - all of them hot-button issues in their states. Win or lose, they tend to pave the way for future legislation, and national change.
California's Proposition 209, which bans racial and sex preferences in public hiring, contracting and education, was widely considered the most divisive - and one of significant ballot battles around the country.
Both sides invoked the spirit and speeches of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, framing the debate as a vote on the future of discrimination and affirmative action around the country.
Supporters argued for a colorblind society, while opponents said the move would derail programs that counter racism and sexism.
The final say will likely shape affirmative action programs nationally - and will probably be decided, not by voters, but in the courts. Both sides yesterday filed lawsuits over the measure - proponents to get it into effect, opponents to get rid of it as unconstitutional.
"No matter what happens, this is only the beginning of what we believe will be a nationwide battle," said Kathy Spillar, a leader of Stop Prop 209.
Casinos and other gambling proposals lost out in Ohio, Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska and Washington. But in Michigan, bolstered by strong support from Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, voters agreed to three casinos in that city.
Louisiana voters were less sure. Given a unique opportunity to kick out an industry that has riddled the state with scandal, they split their decision in parish-by-parish votes. Six parishes with riverboat casinos voted to keep them, 23 decided to allow it and 14 voted to keep them out; 30 parishes held on to video poker and 34 rejected it.
The nation's views on hunting were just as jumbled. Massachusetts and Washington banned the use of dogs and bait to hunt bears while Michigan and Idaho rejected such restrictions. Oregon refused to repeal a 1994 ban on similar practices while Colorado banned leg hold traps and Alaska banned tracking wolves from airplanes.
Environmental battles also attracted big money. In Florida, $23 million in advertising by sugar companies and farmers helped persuade voters to reject a penny-a-pound sugar tax for Everglades cleanup. Fertilizer runoff has polluted the fabled "River of Grass," but the voters refused an effort to make farmers pay almost half the enormous costs of restoring the wetland.
Maine's proposed ban on clearcutting on 10 million acres of forest land turned into the most expensive referendum in the state's history, with paper companies spending more than $5 million to defeat it.
"The gun that has been pointed at the head of the Maine economy is now uncocked, unloaded and off the table," said a relieved Gov. Angus King, who had warned that the ban could cost thousands of jobs.
Crime victims got additional protections written into the constitutions of Connecticut, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina and Virginia.
And Minnesota waved the flag for Gulf War veterans, passing a one-time bonus of between $300 and $600 each.
AP PHOTO
Edmund Wong, a junior at the University of California at Berkeley, shouts his disapproval of Proposition 209 during a march with other Berkeley students yesterday in Berkeley, Calif.