Voters Split on Spending Initiatives on States' Ballots

The NY Times reports:

In Texas, voters were in a spending mood on Tuesday. In New Jersey and Oregon, they were not.

Five statewide bond initiatives were approved by Texas residents this week, including $3 billion for cancer research and prevention that was championed by Lance Armstrong and up to $5 billion for highway improvement projects.

But in New Jersey voters rejected $450 million in new spending for stem cell research, and in Oregon they blocked a plan for increased taxes for health care.

Backing an effort for increased fiscal restraint, Washington residents approved statewide measures to require a two-thirds vote by the Legislature for fee increases and a constitutional amendment requiring that 1 percent of general state revenue for each fiscal year be placed in a budget stabilization account.

Heading the other direction, voters in Maine approved a total of $134 million in bonds for research and development, campus improvements and land conservation.

Isolated voting problems were reported in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland and Pennsylvania because of a combination of poll worker error and machine failures.

Contests in three states offered clues to how certain hot-button issues might play in the 2008 presidential race.

In Virginia, concerns about illegal immigration did not produce the voter turnout and fervor that Republicans sought. The state has become a national testing ground for some of the strictest anti-immigration policies, and Republican lawmakers promised to crack down with plans in some counties to deny services to illegal immigrants.

But Democrats picked up four seats in the State Senate, to take the majority for the first time in more than a decade. They also gained three seats in the House, cutting into the Republican majority.

In Utah, voters resoundingly rejected a school voucher program that was supported by the Republican governor and Republican-controlled Legislature. The measure was controversial because, rather than focusing on low-income students in poor-performing schools, the program would have been available to families regardless of income or school performance.

Supporters said the measure would widen options for parents, but critics, including national teachers unions, faulted it as undercutting money for public education. Had the measure been approved, political strategists say, it would probably have been pushed in other Republican-leaning states next year.

Oregon voters approved a measure that curbs the land-use rights of developers of subdivisions and industrial and commercial sites. Supporters of the measure, especially environmental groups, raised twice as much money as opponents, who received most of their money from timber companies and related interests.

Property rights measures that empowered large landowners were blocked in 2006 in California, Idaho and Washington but passed in Arizona, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a liberal advocacy group that tracks ballot trends.

Plenty of new spending was approved on local initiatives. For example, voters in Mecklenburg County, N.C., home of Charlotte, approved $582 million in municipal bonds for public school construction, community colleges and open-space projects.

County and city voters in Denver approved $430 million in bonds for transportation, parks, cultural centers, public safety and libraries.

For poll workers in some counties, low turnouts prevented voting problems from escalating.

The most serious failures occurred in Rockville, Md., where thousands of voters were mistakenly identified as having already voted by absentee ballot when they arrived at the polls. Poll workers kept handwritten lists of the names of everyone who voted. To ensure that no one voted twice, they said they planned to compare the list to the names of those who cast absentee ballots.

More than 60 touch-screen machines failed in Marion County, Ind., for several hours, possibly because of battery problems or the memory cards’ being inserted upside-down, election officials said.

Voting officials in southwest Fulton County, Ga., received court approval on Tuesday afternoon to extend the voting day by an hour after machines did not work because of poll workers’ error, election officials said. Eighteen to 30 voters left without voting before the machines were repaired.

Voters in Weld County, Colo., were given paper ballots for about an hour in the morning until officials repaired a handful of voting machines.

When poll workers in Denver starting falling behind deadline in counting ballots, the county called in several dozen SWAT and other police officers to help. Election officials said the police had assisted in past elections because they had undergone the background checks required to count votes.

Technicians in Bedford County, Pa., had to visit all 40 precincts to repair every optical scanning machine used to read ballots.

Chertoff May Void Judge's Order to Halt Border Fence

AzStarNet.com reports:

The nation's top security official may use his power to unilaterally trump a federal court order halting construction of a fence on a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is weighing whether to invoke a section of federal law that allows him to exempt border construction projects from any law, his press aide, Russ Knocke, told Capitol Media Services. That includes requirements for studies on environmental impacts of federally funded projects.

The move would not be unprecedented: Chertoff used the power at least twice since it was granted.

In 2005 he decided to build fencing near San Diego without conducting environmental studies. And in January he issued a waiver from all laws for a project along the edge of the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range in Southwestern Arizona.

The possibility of Chertoff again exempting his agency from environmental laws comes days after a federal judge in Washington stopped construction of a nearly two-mile stretch of fence at the foot of the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area southeast of Tucson. The conservation area, designated by Congress in 1988, is described on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's Web site as ecologically "one of the most important riparian areas in the United States."

The restraining order gives two environmental groups time to convince Judge Ellen Huvelle that plans for vehicle barriers in the river's floodway and washes leading into it will cause erosion and sedimentation that will harm the environment and affect species dependent on the river.

Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club also contend the BLM, which controls the area, did not seek public input on the project in performing an environmental assessment that took just three weeks. They contend the BLM should have prepared a more formal environmental impact statement.

Chertoff, however, can make the lawsuit, and judge's ruling, disappear simply by declaring the project exempt from the law the groups used to sue.

Knocke said Chertoff believes the lawsuit is without merit, saying the BLM's assessment concluded the project would not harm the area.

"We care about the border environment as much as anyone," Knocke said. "But when weighing a lizard in the balance with human lives, this border infrastructure project is the obvious choice."

Attorneys for Chertoff also argue that environmental damage from illegal border crossers is greater than anything that would occur from the barriers.

Nothing short of congressional action could stop Chertoff from exempting the San Pedro project from the environmental laws if he decides to do so.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., whose district includes the river, does not support repeal of Chertoff's power.

"Border security has to be a top concern in a state like this," said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' press aide. He said the congresswoman believes federal officials "should have the tools they need to do the job."

Bob Dreher, vice president for conservation law for Defenders of Wildlife, said what might stop Chertoff from exempting the project from federal laws is, "They have to do, I think, the politically costly thing of publicly saying, 'We're above the law.' " He said that might be what kept Chertoff from waiving environmental laws for a similar border project in Texas.

While Giffords is unwilling to repeal the law, she is willing to apply pressure.

She is one of five members of Congress who wrote Chertoff last week asking him to delay further work on the project, prepare a full environmental impact statement and conduct public hearings, something not done before construction began late last month.

"Our communities support safe and secure borders and simply ask for adequate time to share their concerns with their government, as they have a right to do," reads the letter signed by Giffords as well as Rep. Raúl Grijalva, also a Tucson Democrat. Three members of the Texas congressional delegation also signed that letter.

In his January decision dealing with the Goldwater bombing range, a military training ground, Chertoff declared that the high number of people entering the country illegally through that stretch of the desert create an immediate need to build not just fencing but also vehicle barriers, towers, sensors and cameras.

That, he said, justified exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act — the law being used by the two environmental groups to sue over the San Pedro project — as well as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Wildlife Refuge Systems Administration Act.

Chertoff also exempted the project from another law, which requires his agency to follow certain administrative procedures.

U.S. Town Opposes 'Big Brother' Mexico Border Fence

Reuters reports:
A pilot project to place a high-tech network of surveillance towers along a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border has met boisterous opposition in this Arizona town, where some residents call it "Big Brother."

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is installing a network of nine towers with ground radar and night vision cameras to monitor a 28-mile (45-km) stretch of border near Arivaca, southwest of Tucson.

It is the first trial for the communications and technology arm of the government's Secure Border Initiative announced in 2005. Dubbed "SBInet," authorities say it will be extended across some 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders in segments in coming years.

Residents of this remote, high desert ranching town of 1,500 people have packed four public meetings in recent weeks to oppose the project, which is due to go live at the end of next month.

"It's like Big Brother. It will place the whole town under surveillance," community activist C Hues told Reuters as residents gathered for a meeting late on Tuesday with CBP and Border Patrol representatives.

"The government will be able to watch and record every movement we make, 24 hours a day. It will be like living in a prison yard," she added.

Residents of the community are particularly concerned about one 98-foot-(30-meter-)tall tower topped with cameras and radar that will be placed just south of the town, which lies about 12 miles from the border.

"Why are they doing it here and not at the border? It's horrifying, it makes no sense," said Melissa Murray, a gallery owner from nearby Tubac.

Last year, about 1.1 million people were arrested crossing the border illegally from Mexico, more than a third of them through the heavily trafficked desert corridor south of Tucson, Arizona.

The Border Patrol said the system, which is being built by aerospace giant Boeing under a contract estimated at some $2 billion, is a necessary step to close the border to illegal entrants and allow agents to promptly identify and capture illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

Information captured by the towers -- including live images giving GPS locations of any intruders -- will be streamed live via satellite from command centers in Tucson and Sells to Border Patrol agents with laptops patrolling nearby.

Eventually it will be integrated into a wider network, including a fleet of Predator B unmanned surveillance drones.

"We need to have eyes on what's happening here," said Tucson sector Border Patrol spokesman Jesus Rodriguez. "We are not placing the town under surveillance, but we will be watching whatever is walking north to the town," he added.

Some ranchers around the former gold and silver mining community favor the project, which they say is needed to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, who they said cut cattle fences and dump trash.

Some local residents predicted that the technology would meet with opposition in other rural areas as it is rolled out along the rest of the state's border with Mexico by the end of 2008.

"It's not just Arivaca," high school teacher Luke Brannen said. "It's going to affect a lot of people in other communities in the future. They're next."