Word: ballot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...persuaded," said Heseltine, "that I have a better prospect now than Mrs. Thatcher of leading the Conservative Party into a fourth election victory." The party's 372 Members of Parliament were to indicate in a secret ballot this week whether they agreed with him. Bookmakers were offering 2-to-1 odds on Thatcher to retain her position as leader of the ruling party and thus as Prime Minister. To win outright, she must receive an overall majority plus 15% more votes than any other candidate. To force a second ballot next week, Heseltine has to garner at least...
That was the arithmetic of victory, but measuring the impact of the contest itself is less clear cut. Heseltine's challenge was only the latest proof of Thatcher's declining fortunes as her third term nears its end. She can lose even by winning. In last year's leadership ballot, 60 M.P.s voted against her or abstained. This time, Heseltine's supporters claim he will top 100, which would be a major blow to her authority. As the Times of London put it last week, "The country needs to know whether Mrs. Thatcher does or does not retain sufficient party...
...came in California, where Proposition 128, Big Green, was defeated almost 2 to 1. A second measure, Forests Forever, designed to ban clear-cutting and save old-growth forests and redwoods, lost by a narrower margin. In part they fell victim to a backlash against the sheer number of ballot propositions -- 28 in all -- that Californians had to contend with in the voting booth. "They voted no on everything," laments Lynn Sadler, campaign director for Forests Forever. Big Green was a ballot buster all by itself, a 16,000-word laundry list of aims, including a ban on cancer-causing...
...defeats contain some valuable lessons for environmentalists. Among them: 1) proposals should be simple and well focused, 2) plans that shift power from localities to state capitals are a hard sell, and 3) a recession is a bad time to ask for money. The very strategy of favoring ballot proposals over the horse trading of legislation may also bear re-examining. "I don't predict the beginning of some trend that makes environmental initiatives more difficult to achieve," insists Jim Maddy, executive director of the League of Conservation Voters in Washington. Yet last week's results hardly suggested that...
...major issues that were supposed to matter vanished behind the voting-booth curtain. By and large, incumbents won, hypocrites lost, ballot initiatives, worthy or not, were voted down, and two-thirds of those eligible to vote stayed home. Though both parties found something to celebrate, the Democrats fared better in preparing for the redistricting of House seats. Neither party emerged with a clear mandate to carry it to 1992 -- and George Bush turned out to be vulnerable after...