About one year ago, California voters rejected proposition 34 which would have abolished the state's death penalty and commuted the sentences of the 727 inmates on death row to life in prison. It lost by only about 6 percentage points though, suggesting that support for the death penalty in California has severely diminished since the 70 percent who voted for it upon its restoration in 1978. The main reason behind the push to abolish this practice was cost reasons as the system is notoriously slow, rife with expensive legal appeals.
Besides calling to attention the important and really thought-provoking debate over the usefulness and morality of the death penalty, looking into this proposition made me think about the way in which issues are decided on a state-by-state basis. It's so odd how some states have abolished the death penalty, some states have legalized gay marriage - some states, and not others. It's disconcerting to think that based on where you are physically, one side or the other of a state line within the same country, your rights can be vastly, crucially altered. Within this comparison of state operation is the voting system itself - how legislators in other states have repealed the death penalty while in California the government has to work through the proposition system based on the state's constitution. How can something so pivotal be decided by the people in one state versus the government in another, under the same national umbrella?
The terms: http://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/34/
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