Nature Conservancy Magazine: Autumn 2009 - Vote Yes

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From 1986 to 2007, voters supported 155 of the ballot measures The Nature Conservancy worked on, generating more than $40.4 billion in 30 states.

Share Your Thoughts

Minnesotans made their views known by voting to raise sales tax in order to save their natural resources and local culture in their state. Share your thoughts about this historic ballot measure.

A few things to think about:

Would you vote YES for this ballot measure in your state, even if it meant raising taxes?
Do you think the measure would pass if it were voted on today?
Would you help a campaign to get this vote passed?
What groups might or might not collaborate on advocating a ballot measure like this?
What surprises you most about this story?

Go Deeper

Ballot Campaigns
Learn more about ballot campaigns and conservation.

The Nature Conservancy on the Campaign Trail
By the End of 2008, The Nature Conservancy had supported 164 successful conservation-related ballot measures. Read some highlights of those winning measures.

By Erik Ness

It's just two hours before the polls close in Minnesota, and the campaign manager is lost.

Peering beyond the crack in the windshield of his gold SUV, Ken Martin struggles to navigate around Minneapolis construction. The car radio is breathless over Barack Obama’s gathering blue storm. Martin’s Blackberry chirps ecstatically as messages pour in from far-flung political friends. Already people are celebrating a historic election. But Martin is deep in his own end-game: He’s got nearly 200 people in the field, and — most important — the polls are still open. Voters are still in play.

Martin is in charge of another historic, albeit lower-profile, candidate: the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, a ballot measure that could raise billions for conservation in Minnesota. Ten years in the making, it is the largest referendum of its kind in U.S. history. Exhaustive research had shown that it has broad nonpartisan support. But after 10 months of campaigning, Martin still can’t say whether voters will stay in the booth long enough to read the ballot question and pencil in Yes, or simply leave after choosing McCain or Obama. “Keeps me up at night,” he confesses.

“This is the time of the campaign where there’s nothing else you can do,” he adds, wanting nothing so much as to do just a little more. And so here he is on the waning edge of election night trying to get to the one place where he might yet sway a few more voters.

But when he arrives, there is not a voter in sight.

Agitated, he dials his second in command, Justin Fay. “I’m not being useful here, Justin, so you’ve got to give me a precinct, because I need to go to a place where there’s a line. Do you have any place at all?” Campaign intel delivers: Precinct 6, Ward 4, just 10 minutes away.

The polling place is a church at midblock, and the line extends nearly to the corner. It’s a beautiful autumn night, clear and mild, with a half moon rising. More than 350 people are in queue, and the atmosphere is festive. It’s an urban tableau of languages and skin colors, voters attired in everything from traditional Somali head scarves to Goth regalia. In the final tally for this precinct, Obama would outrun McCain 10 to 1, and the partisan crowd already senses victory. Voters don’t seem to mind the wait, as they snap pictures, marking history.

“We’ve got to find a place where we can talk to these people,” says Martin, spotting a campaign volunteer at the corner holding a “Vote Yes” sign. She’s one of many working at critical precincts around the state today, and she reports getting pushed around by an ornery poll watcher. All day the campaign’s last-minute visibility push has run into flak from election officials. Undeterred, sure of his rights and staying beyond the 100-foot perimeter set by law, Martin starts working the end of the line: “Vote Yes for clean water.”

First one and then another poll worker tries to shut him down. “You’re interfering with our right to talk with people and campaign on Election Day,” he argues. “I’m going to continue working until I hear otherwise.”

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