Because tobacco smoking causes 430,000 U.S. deaths annually, wide-reaching smoking bans are needed. Bans reduce cigarette consumption, encourage cessation, protect nonsmokers from second-hand smoke, and promote an attitude that smoking is undesirable. Therefore, bans may prevent future generations from suffering many smoking-related health problems. The federal government has not implemented widereaching smoking bans so it falls on individual states, counties, or communities to devise appropriate smoking policy. To date, smoking policy has been determined by legislators, who may have conflicts that prevent them from acting in the publics best interest. However, this method of implementing smoking policy may be changing. In 2005, Washington residents voted by ballot initiative to strengthen existing state smoking regulations. In 2006, Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio residents voted by ballot initiatives to implement strict statewide smoking bans. This research presents a way to predict how residents of other states might vote if given the opportunity. Two research hypotheses are tested and accepted: a positive relationship between favorable votes and urbanness, and a preference favoring smoking bans where smoking regulations already exist. Finally, a projection is made that a smoking ban vote in Kentucky would yield favorable results, and a map showing projected county votes is provided.

Direct democracy was adopted by states to balance the influence and power of corporate interests. Although corporate money has always been a part of American democracy, dark money expenditures have increased significantly since the Citizens United v. FEC case. Corporate money in elections poses a problem because it inconsistent with the tenants of direct democracy. Little published literature addresses the influence of corporate money on direct democracy measures. Using Kingdon's multiple streams approach as the foundation, the purpose of this case study was to investigate the perceived influence of corporate money on the 2018 ballot initiative and referendum measures in Arizona. The research question was focused on the perceptions of political professionals of the influence of corporate money on direct democracy. Data were collected through using a purposeful sampling that identified 10 political professionals. Semi-structured interviews with participants were supplemented with document review. Data were inductively coded, and then subjected to a thematic analysis procedure, producing 4 thematic elements. The key findings of this study indicated that access to the ballot, using an effective campaign strategy, running an effective paid media campaign, and the outcome all hinged on the money available to fund and support, or oppose, a measure. The implications for social change for the study include informing policy makers of the perceived influence of corporate money on direct democracy so they are equipped to implement policy aligned with the original goal of citizen participation in the state's constitution.

"Authenticity, Citizenship and Accommodation: LGBT Rights in a Red State" examines the discourse around volunteerism, exceptionalism, and queer citizenship that emerged within the context of a statewide (anti-gay) ballot initiative campaign in the American Southwest. I argue that the ways in which local volunteers and activists define themselves and their attempts to defeat the ballot initiative is tied to the struggle over the authority to represent local LGBT organizational culture and an emergent New West identity. In such a way, local debates over authentic western lifestyles that divide regional communities intertwine with intergenerational debates over gay liberation and rights frameworks, and the polarized discourse on blue and red states which have dominated the U.S. political climate of the past decade. While statewide campaign leaders with a base in Phoenix (the state capital) focused on polling data and messaging in order to stop the passage of the amendment, many Tucson activists and organizational leaders tied to the LGBT community center sought to strategize a long-term grassroots approach to change hearts and minds. Within this debate over campaign strategy and internal decision-making, both groups drew attention to the differences between the metropolitan areas. This regional example speaks to the ways in which established theoretical frameworks anthropologists utilize to understand social movements may prove insufficient for understanding the diversity that exists within the everyday processes of collective action. The internal messaging war that spilled outside of the confines of the campaign steering committee meetings into the pages of the statewide gossip and newspaper editorial sections also speaks to the ways in which official declarations of ideological stance should not be taken as the actual intent of those seeking change. One may shape one's personal story to be on message, choose to defy those constraints, or use the rhetorical strategy of the message without actually committing to the underlying premise. The broader national concerns are localized symbolically in the notion of blue and red counties, but also take on a regional flavor in the satirical call to statehood for the Southern Arizona. Here issues of authenticity emerge not only within the context of the campaign disputes around messaging, and by extension, who has the right to speak for and about the LGBT organizational community, but also in the realm of derisive banter that travels back and forth between the two major metropolitan areas over what it means to live an authentic western lifestyle. Within the southern metropolis, this discourse is framed by the notion that the western desert is a different sort of place, with a different sort of people and way of life that is threatened by snowbirds, retirees, Midwestern lifestyles and corporate interests. Often Phoenix to the north is seen as a representation of all these negative influences. In addition, Center-based activists and volunteers, describe their southern city in idealistic terms as an oasis for LGBT community, artists, activists, migrants, refugees, and all manner of progressive politics. Memory enacted through the telling of one's story at a Coming Out Day testimonial, political rallies and in dialogue with an anthropologist are shaped by these notions of difference. These notions of difference also emerge as a pattern in the narrative construction of space, violence and memory within activist life histories. These life histories in turn reveal a fragment of local LGBT organizational culture, in which the process of professionalization transforms the meaning of community, and the act of representation transforms the role of activist into that of the citizen volunteer. The community center in this sense is a memorialization of community and movement culture, and by idealizing what came before it masks material conditions at the same time that it offers up the potential of a more radical present/future. While the community center, Tucson and Pima County are coded as oases of safety, this image is continually disrupted by counter narratives, including the state-wide campaign to stop the marriage amendment; local support for the Protect Marriage and anti-immigrant amendments; and evidence of on-going violence directed against racial, ethnic and religious minorities and those who transgress hetero and gender normative expectations. These disruptions however appear to be cyclical in that they allow both professionals and concerned community members (citizen volunteers) to rally together in a show of strength and solidarity and in so doing represent the authentic, legitimate community. However, these disruptions may also allow for counter narratives to enter into public discourse, thereby offering up a more radical envisioning of community beyond the limits of LGBT organizational culture. / Anthropology

Thesis advisor: Marc Landy / The “Death with Dignity Act,” if passed in November 2012 in Massachusetts by means of a ballot initiative, would have allowed doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients with fewer than six months to live. Introduced by two pro-assisted suicide organizations from the Pacific Northwest, the initiative was expected to take advantage of a political “perfect storm” brewing in the Bay State. A blue state in a presidential election year, with President Obama at the top of the Democratic ticket, Massachusetts was expected to produce an electoral outcome favorable to assisted suicide. Oregon and Washington State had legalized physician-assisted suicide in 1998 and 2008, respectively. Polling in 2011 showed a 2-1 majority among Massachusetts voters in favor of assisted suicide. Nonetheless, the Archbishop of Boston and the Bishops of Worcester, Fall River and Springfield, organized as the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, took up the challenge to oppose the initiative. Relying on the expertise of paid political consultants, they mounted a two-tiered campaign. An internal component, directed at Catholics, included the dissemination of over 2 million pieces of in-print and electronic materials urging a “no” vote on the measure. An external component, directed at the wider public, relied on a coalition of organizations representing the three major religions, health and hospice organizations, disabilities rights activists, and pharmacists. Using “flaws” in the bill identified through strategic polling, they appealed to voters even sympathetic to assisted suicide to reject the bill. When the votes were counted 2.7 million Massachusetts citizens voted on the physician-assisted suicide initiative and it was defeated by 67,891 votes, 51.1% to 48.9%. One key to the defeat was the split in the vote in the city of Boston, where Question 2 was defeated 50.9% to 49.1% . Twelve of Boston’s 22 wards voted against the measure. Leading the way among the twelve were Dorchester, Roxbury, and Hyde Park, traditionally black, liberal Democratic strongholds. This study shows that even the most effective, well-funded, Church-initiated campaign in Massachusetts in 2012 might well have foundered on the 2-1 majority in favor of assisted suicide at the polls, not for the strategic identification of “flaws in the bill,” the broad-based coalition campaign based on them, and the “split in the vote in the black community in Boston.” . / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.