s the nation contemplated the possibility of George W. Bush becoming president while losing the popular vote, voters in two populous states rejected one of the programs closest to Bush's heart: school vouchers.
Another Bush issue, gun rights, took a beating in ballot questions in Colorado and Oregon. Voters in both states required background checks for gun buyers at gun shows, something gun-rights advocates had called too burdensome for vendors.
''I think the gun issue in Colorado is certainly a blow, because Bush won the state by a large margin and the state is generally not against guns,'' said Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist.
Although cautious to generalize about varied initiatives in diverse states, Thomas Patterson, director of the Vanishing Voter Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the losses are piling up among state efforts to push school vouchers, a key part of Bush's education platform.
''Probably large majorities of Americans perceive problems in schools,'' Patterson said, ''but do they want to do it with taxpayer money channeled outside the public school system?''
Michigan voters soundly defeated a measure that targeted children in poorly performing districts, while California defeated a proposal that offered vouchers to all, regardless of income.
The measures on vouchers and guns were among a wide range of ballot proposals decided in 42 states. Voters also gave themselves tax breaks, in Massachusetts and Washington, authorized a state lottery to fund education in South Carolina and struck down a 99-year-old Alabama law against interracial marriage.
The Michigan initiative had touted $3,300 vouchers for children in school districts where fewer than 67 percent of students graduate. The defeat had national significance, said Skocpol, because the proposal was limited to poor children ''to reassure middle-class people who are happy with their schools.''
She said the result would be a blow to Bush and other conservatives nationwide because they ''had been very much hoping that that kind of cautious wording would garner a majority,'' Skocpol said.
But exit polls showed about 70 percent of voters, in every income category, rejecting the measure. Seventy-seven percent of blacks voted against the measure, as did 69 percent of whites.
Californians rejected giving $4,000 vouchers to every student, with 71 percent voting no.
In Colorado, 70 percent of voters supported the gun-control measure; in Oregon, 60 percent did so. Both states suffered high-profile school shootings: the Columbine massacre in April 1999 and the 1998 slayings in Oregon by a 15-year-old.
The result also reflected the suburbanization of Colorado, once a state that saw itself as rural and Western, said Skocpol. The state threw its electoral votes to Bush, while Oregon's vote was still being tallied yesterday.
Among other measures decided Tuesday were many tax-slashing initiatives. Patterson said voters in recent years have been very selective on such measures. ''They like tax cuts, but tend not to grab at every one willy-nilly,'' he said. ''Voters have tended to be much more responsible on fiscal issues, much more than they were when the first one came down the pike, Proposition 13 in California.''
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
