California voters assess anti-GMO initiatives

paign materials, newspaper coverage, editorials and letters to the editor that appeared prior to the vote. “The theme of limiting multinational corporate influence in local agricultural policy and directions dwarfed all others,” they say. After Measure H passed, supporters said it was a “test case for democracy.” But Giusti says something important was left out of the Mendocino County GMO debate: science. “Local politics are not driven by accuracy. There’s a division between science and local politics, and in Measure H the two sides came crashing together,” Giusti says. Notably, Measure H wrongly defines DNA as a protein, Giusti says, and while state initiatives are checked for accuracy, local initiatives are not. Science was often not considered in the newspapers and debates as locals focused on economic and political themes, Giusti and Lemaux found in their analysis.