Writing for the Los Angeles Daily News (and reprinted in FrontPageMag.Com), Chris Weinkopf points out the hypocrisy of the “count every vote” mantra from Democrats. At the same time that Gore and Clinton claim every vote must count, their administration is arguing before the Supreme Court that the results of a 1996 California election must be invalidated and ignored.
Why? Because voters in California dared to legalize marijuana for medical use.
When it comes to medical marijuana, the “will of the people” doesn’t mean squat. In fact the Clinton-Gore Drug Enforcement Agency has threatened to arrest and prosecute doctors who prescribe marijuana to their patients in the few states that have legalized the drug for medical purposes.
As Weinkopf writes, “Gore might like to wax on about how “a vote is not just a piece of paper, a vote is a human voice, but ever since Proposition 215 made the ballot, the administration has done all it can to silence the clear voice of California voters.”
On the other hand, Weinkopf conveniently forgets that Republicans have also been more than willing to ignore elections that included the medical marijuana issue. When Washington, DC, voted a few years ago on a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for medical purposes, Republican Bob Barr of Georgia authored an amendment that not only to prohibited certification of those results but also forbade the city to publicly release unofficial vote totals. The Congress was later overturned on the last point by a federal court, and it 69 percent of voters approved the initiative.
George W. Bush, for his part, has said that although he opposes the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes, it is an issue that should be properly left to the states rather than the federal government. For his part, Gore has waffled on the subject, writing a strong anti-medical marijuana letter in 1997, but then endorsing medical marijuana in a debate with Bill Bradley last December.
Medical Pot Goes to the High Court. Chris Weinkopf, Los Angeles Daily News, December 3, 2000.