Attitudes in 2020 towards medical and recreational marijuana in prohibitionist Nebraska

Background - Despite considerable change in the legal status of marijuana in the United States in the 21st century, the state of Nebraska has seen very little legislative movement. With no legal allowances for medical or recreational use of marijuana, Nebraska has become an outlier in maintaining a complete prohibition on the substance. We examine overall public support for medical and recreational marijuana in the state of Nebraska, as well as support by intrastate region, political party, and the association between stigma and legal support.Methods - We use data from the 2020 Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS) which is paper survey mailed to an address-based sample of Nebraskans who are 19 and older. The 2020 NASIS was mailed to 8,000 addresses in Nebraska using a stratified sampling design. Using a question developed by Pew Research Center we ask if participants support legal marijuana for medical AND recreational use, medical use only, or if they think it should not be legal. Results – We estimate that 83% of Nebraskans support medical marijuana legalization, a clear majority of opinion. Support is more divided between whether the substance should be legal for both medical and recreational use, or just for medical use. There are also associations between support preferences and age, political party, gender, and the amount of stigma a participant reports in their community towards people that use various substances.Conclusion – A small percent of the Nebraska population are estimated to favor keeping marijuana illegal. The current legislative prohibition is out of step with public opinion in the state, suggesting that ballot initiatives will likely find success in the state should current legislation fail.

Educational Policy in the Post-racial Era: Federal Influence on Local Educational Policy in Hawaii

On March 27, 2008, Newsweek ran an article titled, “Obama’s Postracial Test: How will the Democratic Candidate Deal with Potentially Divisive Ballot Initiatives Calling for an End to Affirmative Action?” And, the August 6, 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine featured an article titled, “Is Obama the End of Black Politics?” Since then, writers from the right and left have raised and challenged the idea that the election of Barack Obama somehow signals a new, post-racial era and presidency. But what does this mean for Hawaii? With its unique racial diversity and its connection to Obama, might Hawaii somehow represent the first post-racial state? And, does this mean anything for the way education is run in that state? In addressing these questions, this paper looks carefully at the Obama Administration’s recent education initiative called the Race to the Top Fund and examines its implications for education in Hawaii.

Men and Women

Men’s earnings have become less important as a predictor of marriage rates in a world where women are thriving educationally and economically. Standards have risen. There are wide and high expectations for material well-being in marriage. Christians respond to these trends by exhibiting sex role flexibility in marriage—and often dual incomes—but they are not gender revolutionaries about marriage. Their behavior reveals no interest in overhauling longstanding sex role expectations. At its core, marriage is a relationship of interdependence. Insofar as spouses become functionally similar, marriage becomes less necessary and should become less popular—as is occurring today. Marriage rates are shrinking because of increasing disinterest in what marriage actually is. Marriage will never disappear, however, and its four key expectations—fidelity, totality, permanence, and children—are not social constructions. Public relations campaigns can win ballot initiatives and judges can alter marriage laws, but they cannot ignite new interest in marriage.

Direct Democracy in Education: How Ballot Initiatives Challenge Equal Opportunity and Risk Tyrannizing Underrepresented Students

States have increasingly used ballot initiatives to legislate education policy in recent years, although the consequences for educational equity and justice have been underexamined. This article investigates the extent to which ballot initiatives disproportionately affect traditionally minoritized students, with particular attention to two phenomena: tyranny of the majority and racial threat hypothesis. Results across models consistently find that minority-targeted education initiatives pass at significantly higher rates than those that do not target minoritized students, and they garner considerably more yes votes regardless of passage. For states with more people of color, this effect is magnified, suggesting the potential for tyranny of the majority may increase when there are greater proportions of people of color within a state. This research contributes to the body of literature regarding the impact of state-level policy on education and sheds light on the benefits and potentially negative consequences of the ballot initiative process as an education policy making tool, particularly for our nation’s most disadvantaged students.

County-Level Differences in Support for Recreational Cannabis on the Ballot

Cannabis is traversing an extraordinary journey from an illicit substance to a legal one, due in part to an unprecedented wave of bottom-up law reform through successful citizen ballot initiatives. Yet, even in states that have legalized recreational cannabis, there is substantial geographic variability in support of cannabis legalization. Geographic variability in voter support for cannabis legalization is impactful (e.g., county moratoriums/bans) yet poorly understood. This paper demonstrates the consequences of county-level population demographics, sociopolitical factors, and community differences in experience with criminalization of cannabis possession for understanding county-level variation in support of recreational cannabis law reform on (un)successful ballot measures in California (2010), Colorado (2012), Washington (2012), and Oregon (2014). OLS regression analyses of nearly 200 counties indicate that differences in racial and ethnic composition (% Black, Hispanic), political affiliation (% Republican), past criminalization, gender composition, and higher education level of residents all predict county-level variation in support for liberalization of cannabis law. Stronger Republican political leanings and/or higher percentages of Black or Hispanic residents were associated with reduced support, whereas higher education, male sex composition, and greater past criminalization were associated with increased support for cannabis legalization across counties. Religiosity and rurality were inconsequential as predictors of county-level voting patterns favoring recreational cannabis. The substantial geographic variability in voter support for cannabis legalization has significant implications for policy implementation and effectiveness.

Liberating Cities from Cars

This chapter begins with a range of actions cities can pursue to deprioritize cars while making room on their streets for transit, cyclists, and walkers. It then describes how these strategies work in greenovating cities. The chapter presents the case of Oslo, which is moving toward a car-free downtown. It then looks at three American cases that illuminate the technical, political, and cultural barriers to deprioritizing cars. Efforts in Seattle illustrate that even in a liberal city committed to climate action, deprioritizing cars is painful and politically charged. Nashville’s two failed ballot initiatives to fund transit infrastructure reveal the challenges many cities will face in trying to introduce public transit. Finally, Salt Lake City has been successful in implementing transit. With broad public support and constraints caused by mountains and lakes, Salt Lake City has been able to forge new transit links to reduce congestion.

A Feasible Reform

Each state already has the constitutional power to require that candidates win a majority of the popular vote to receive all of the state’s electoral votes. Each state could adopt the kind of runoff that New Hampshire used in the past, or instant runoff voting. There is no need for a multistate compact. If only two or three states had used runoffs, or instant runoff voting, in 2016—for example, Florida and Michigan, or the three Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—and if Clinton had won those runoffs, then she would have been president. In the future, it might be a Republican candidate who prevails in runoffs in pivotal states but would lose using plurality winner-take-all. States with ballot initiatives can use them to require majority rule for appointing electors as long as they leave the specific details to legislation.