Ballot initiatives backed by Catholic leaders lose in several states

In this year’s election, voters went against nearly all of the ballot initiatives backed by Catholic leaders and advocates, except referendums on minimum wage increases and gun control measures in four states. They voted in favor of legalized recreational marijuana in four states and against it in one. In Colorado, voters passed a measure to legalize assisted suicide, making the state the sixth in the nation with a so-called right-to-die law, joining Washington, Oregon, California, Vermont and Montana. Three death penalty referendums all ended in favor of capital punishment. Oklahoma voters re-approved the use of the death penalty after the state’s attorney general had suspended executions last year. Nebraska voters also reinstated the death penalty, which had been banned by state lawmakers last year. In California, voters defeated a ballot measure to repeal the death penalty and narrowly passed an initiative aiming to speed up executions of death row convictions.