Election Notebook of Tall Winners, Big Losers, Frogs and a Bird

Propositions that were easy to resist. In referendums around the country, voters last week expressed a kind of social laissez-faire, a tolerance for diversity, an intolerance for efforts to legislate morality. The good citizens of Green Bay, Wis., for example, refused to ban the exhibition of obscene material. Californians unhesitatingly rejected an initiative sponsored by Lyndon LaRouchites that could have quarantined AIDS victims. Voters in Massachusetts, Oregon and Rhode Island resisted efforts to restrict a woman's right to have an abortion. Some of the propositions that did pass also reflected a spirit of tolerance for, well, spirits. Voters in Kansas overwhelmingly...