Bite the ballot: progressives are developing a new taste for initiatives. (Gazette).

FOR YEARS CONSERVATIVES had a corner on ballot initiatives. Think of California's infamous Proposition 13, and the anti-tax blitzkrieg that swept after it through 43 states. Think of the anti-choice, anti-gay and anti-environment ballot measures of the last two decades. But 2002 seems to mark a turnaround.

"This year it's the liberals' turn," says M. Dane Waters, head of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, a nonpartisan resource group with conservative roots. Liberal observers agree. It's impossible to label every measure of the 47 that have qualified so far for this ...

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