Voters Get Another Shot At Term Limits Casino Gambling And Bear-Baiting Also To Appear On November Ballot

Washington voters could put limits on their members of Congress and on bear hunters this year.

They also could take a chance on opening Indian reservations to casino gambling.

Supporters of initiatives on term limits, bear-baiting and Indian gambling turned in petitions with far more signatures than needed to qualify for the Nov. 5 ballot, the Washington secretary of state’s office said Monday.

But several other initiative campaigns - on topics as diverse as restricting gill netting, reducing property taxes and legalizing marijuana - didn’t come close enough to the required 181,667 signatures to bother turning in their petitions. The deadline was Friday.

Initiative 670 represents the third time in six years that Washington voters will have a chance to enact term limits for members of Congress.

Voters turned down one initiative in 1991 but approved another in 1992. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually said such a change in rules for congressional service requires a constitutional amendment - but not before voters had defeated the person who took the initiative to court, House Speaker Tom Foley.

This year’s proposal calls for all members of Congress from Washington state to support a constitutional amendment limiting terms to six years in the House and 12 years in the Senate.

If they don’t, a note saying they had voted to oppose term limits would appear on the ballot the next time they face election.

The initiative is part of a push by U.S. Term Limits, a national group which lost the court battle and now is trying to push through a constitutional amendment. But members of Congress aren’t likely to ratify an amendment that would force them out of office, so the new initiative has a clause calling for a constitutional convention on the subject.

Some conservative groups contend that could lead to wholesale rewriting of the U.S. Constitution.

Voters will have the next four months to weigh the pluses and minuses of another term limits initiative.

They also will be drawn into a regional effort to limit hunting of certain game animals.

Initiative 655 is part of an effort to tighten hunting laws throughout the West, and a similar version already has qualified for the ballot in Idaho.

Although the Idaho initiative deals strictly with bears, the Washington proposal would bar hunting of black bears, cougars, bobcats and lynx with the help of dogs or bait.

The Humane Society is pushing bearbaiting initiatives in several states; hunting groups have opposed them.

The gambling initiative represents the second attempt to open Indian lands to casino gambling. Last year, voters turned down a proposal by nearly 3-to-1 after opponents painted it as unregulated gambling on reservations.

This year’s proposal, I-671, calls for tribal and state regulation, and would place limits on the operation of casinos. Gambling profits would be split between the tribe, which would use the money for economic development, and the state, which would spend it on salmon restoration, development and charity.

The three initiatives - which still must have signatures checked to ensure that the required number of registered voters signed petitions - would join two others passed along by the Legislature. Those ask for voter support for school vouchers and for charter schools.

I-173 would authorize vouchers that parents could use to send their children to private schools. I-177 would allow local voters to create publicly funded independent schools that would be exempt from many state regulations and new school reforms.

, DataTimes