To judge by the results alone, you'd have to conclude that the animals took an ugly hit on November 2, given the fact that voters mostly sided against critters in the state ballot measures that impacted animals.
But results alone do not provide the full picture. Yes, animal advocates lost some major battles at the ballot box, most notably two measures to give black bears a fighting chance against unsportsmanlike hunters who'd prefer to gun down bears caught in traps or feeding at bait stations or after they were chased down by dogs. (For those keeping score, there have been eight ballot measures to protect bears from unfair baiting and hounding practices; animal advocates have won four of them.)
Alaska's Ballot Measure 3, which would have prohibited trophy hunters from using bait sites, lost 41.5% to 58.5% (98.4% reporting), while Maine's Question 2, which would have banned all three of the aforementioned inhumane bear-hunting techniques, went down 47% to 53% (90% reporting).
But like celebrity criminal defendants who often secure an acquittal because of high-priced lawyers who sway juries with colorful prose, the trade industries that selfishly dump resources on ballot measures have a built-in advantage, including a massive propaganda machine. That was certainly the case with the two bear hunting measures.
Opponents in Alaska, for example, outspent proponents by an 8 to 1 margin, with the bulk of the money coming from hunting trade organizations like the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance (USSA) and the National Rifle Association. This, after campaign opponents accused measure supporters of bankrolling their efforts with outside donations. Likewise, in Maine, trophy hunters and their allies across the country, including the USSA, outspent animal advocates by a 2 to 1 margin.
To make matters worse in Maine, trade industry opponents actively worked with the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to coordinate the campaign against Question 2. In fact, the state's top bear biologist appeared in TV ads to scare Maine's voters into believing that, without these cruel hunting techniques, the state's bear population would swell to 50% of its current size in five years. (Incidentally, Maine is the only state in the union to allow all three of these techniques.)
"Such groundless and alarmist rhetoric came right from the script of the hunting industry, and not from any objective assessment of bear populations in Maine," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. "The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife engaged in a masquerade, pretending to be wildlife scientists but actually serving as a mouthpiece for trophy hunters. They should be ashamed to have used the good name of the state to promote such indefensible practices."
On the positive side, proponents of Question 2 aired a month-long television campaign that showed actual scenes of baiting and trapping from Maine. It well may have been the first time many Maine citizens had seen these gruesome practices in action, and many of them responded in kind by voting for the measure.
"Yes, we lost this battle," Pacelle said, "but we will redouble our efforts to halt these outrageous practices and to reform the unholy alliance between the hunting lobby and the Department Inland Fisheries and Wildlife."
A Ray of Hope in the Sunshine State
The only other major ballot measure that animal advocates actively worked was Florida's Amendment 4, which would allow dog track owners to bolster their sagging industry by installing slot machines at tracks. This would provide tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue to track owners.
With their eye on long-term survival and massive profits, track owners sunk $20 million to promote the amendment. But with 98.8% of the ballots counted, they were falling short, and the amendment was losing by the slimmest of margins, by a little less than 7,000 votes out of nearly seven million cast. It was still too close to call.
"It looks like a narrow majority of voters saw through the effort by the greyhound industry to enrich itself," The HSUS's Pacelle said. "The industry, with a long history of cruel treatment toward its animal charges, should not be the beneficiary of such a massive subsidy. The HSUS will redouble its efforts to eliminate greyhound racing and assure that every greyhound has a guardian and a home whether they win, place or show."
