LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California voters rejected both initiatives on Tuesday's ballot, deciding not to ban the government from tracking race in everything from preschools to police work and not to divert billions of budget dollars to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure.

Though they were overshadowed by the gubernatorial recall race, both propositions would have made important changes to California law.

Backers had heralded Proposition 54 as a break from race-conscious public policies. But voters across the racial spectrum rejected the measure that would have ended collection of racial data, according to an exit poll conducted for The Associated Press and other news organizations.

Proposition 53 would have diverted billions of budget dollars to rebuilding a crumbling infrastructure.

Initiatives that allocate chunks of the state budget to specific causes have had mixed success, however, and voters apparently decided that the state's multibillion dollar budget mess required needed fixing before the government was hamstrung by another spending mandate.

The racially charged Proposition 54 was far more ideological than Proposition 53, and generated far more interest.

A well-organized coalition of critics hammered Proposition 54 as a brazen blow against anti-discrimination policies. Backers insisted it would be a leap toward a "colorblind society."

The proposition would have banned the collection or analysis of racial information in public education, contracting and employment. It would have been the first of its kind in the nation.

Instead, strong majorities of whites, blacks and Hispanics voted it down, according to the exit poll.

California's past dabblings in direct democracy have seen voters incite anti-tax revolutions and doom bilingual education and affirmative action. Often, precedents passed here find their way to other states.

That has been the model for Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who put Proposition 54 on the ballot. A polarizing figure since his Proposition 209 banned race-based preferences in 1996, he campaigned on the assertion that public policies which fit people into racial boxes are outdated and destructive.

Although overshadowed by the gubernatorial recall, Proposition 54 opponents managed to attract their share of high-profile opponents. A fusillade of television ads featured former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Their strategy was to kill it by attacking its Achilles heel: language they said would prevent doctors from tracking how diseases afflict different populations. That, they said, made the proposition a life-and-death vote.

Connerly decried that attack as both wrong and disingenuous and has said he might refile a future proposition that would make an exemption for medical research airtight against critics.

While California has reinvented its laws through such ballot propositions, Tuesday's special election was an exception.

Voters rejected Proposition 53, which would have steered 3 percent of each year's state budget into a fund to fix roads, bridges and sewage plants. Proponents had openly downplayed its chances, suggesting it might get caught up in voters' perception that California's finances need fixing before any new priorities are established.

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On the Net:
Voter Guide:
www.voterguide.ss.ca.gov/propositions/2-1-guide.html

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)