Last November's elections saw voters in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Alaska legalize the medical use of marijuana. The Washington D.C. electorate may have also approved their own medical marijuana ballot initiative. Initiative 59, if passed, would permit people to use marijuana on a doctor's recommendation. Exit polls suggest voters overwhelmingly approved the measure. What the actual ballots say, no one is allowed to know. Congress added an amendment to the D.C. appropriations bill that made it illegal for election officials to count Initiative 59's votes.

The District of Columbia, being a federal district and not a proper state, makes do without a legislature. Congress gets to play that role for them. Since residents of D.C. don't get to vote for any congresspersons, this relationship tends to be a little tense. Especially when democracy gets out of hand.

After citizens had gotten enough petition signatures to put the initiative on the ballot, Rep. Robert Barr (R-Georgia), added an amendment to the 1999 appropriations bill prohibiting the District from spending money on an initiative that would "legalize or otherwise reduce the penalties on marijuana." By the time the bill had passed, the district's elections board had already printed the ballots, including Referendum 59. Stuck in a double bind, the board promptly went insane. First, they decided to shuck the printer the $165 it cost to print the Initiative 59 portion of the ballots (now there's responsible government for you). Then they toyed with the idea of rewriting the election software to make the offensive votes just disappear. They gave that one up as dangerous to the non-verboten ballot items. How much easier their job would have been had Congress simply canceled the election outright. They settled on merely not "pushing the button" that would spit out 59's tally, a task that would cost $1.64 in parts and labor. Chairman Benjamin Wilson explained the board's position. "Ever mindful of its primary role of insuring a fair and honest election, the board is reluctant to enter into a political dispute with Congress."

The ACLU filed suit against the district demanding the release of the results. "The Barr amendment prohibits any initiative that would reduce the penalties for marijuana, but allows any initiative that would increase those penalties," said Arthur Spitzer, the ACLU's legal director. "That is like saying voters can vote for Republicans but not for Democrats, or can vote to build nuclear power plants but not to ban them." When D.C.'s chief lawyer, John Ferren, a former D.C. Court of Appeals judge read the complaint, he refused to defend the lawsuit. Instead, he filed papers to join the suit as a plaintiff. "I am offended," he said, "that my own vote cannot be counted."

Rep. Barr says he has more important considerations than mere democracy. You've seen the commercial where the fried egg is "your brain on drugs." Well, that's what Barr's brain looks like when he just thinks about drugs. He knows what those D.C. citizens are really all about. As he said in a recent interview: "Is there legitimate speculation to think, given Marion Barry's history and the liberal leanings of D.C. voters, that they've decided to fight drugs? I doubt it." His constituents apparently doubt it as well, and according to the Congressman, "They don't want their taxpayer dollars used to legalize marijuana." Not even their share of the $500 D.C. officials say the referendum cost. Seems they don't mind the many more times that amount spent trying to keep the results hushed up.

As it turns out, however, Congress doesn't actually appropriate any money for D.C. elections. While it could be argued that the money they do allot the city for other programs allows money to be freed up for frivolous things like elections, the board did have a choice. "Ever mindful of its primary role" the board could have released the vote count anyway. That would of course entail violating the express will of Congress as formalized in an obscure, last minute amendment tacked onto a complicated appropriations bill. It's probably better not to go there. Instead we'll focus on the positive. Think of all the ballot items that weren't dispatched into oblivion.

Whether or not we ever know whether 69% (as exit polls suggest) of D.C.'s voters really approved the referendum is in the hands of U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts. A hearing was set for Dec. 18, when argument was entertained as to whether or not voters can be trusted to vote; no decision was made at that hearing. The Justice Department has weighed in on behalf of Congress, apparently on the theorys that Congress can do whatever they want to anybody--so long as it's not the president.

In late November, U.S. Capitol Police ejected the referendum's sponsor and fourteen other "pro-democracy" demonstrators from Barr's office, where they presented a check for $1.64 to pay for the labor of recording referendum 59's results. Barr's staff refused the check.