One story I never got around to covering over the weekend was Saturday’s signature gathering deadline for R-71, the church-backed referendum to repeal Washington’s recently expanded domestic partners statute. R-71 backers claimed they turned in about 138,000 signatures, almost 18,000 more than the 120,577 needed to qualify for the ballot, but as Sec. of State spokesman Dave Ammons says, that slight cushion still only puts this measure in the “iffy range.”
On average, about 18% of signatures are disqualified due to duplicates, mismatched signatures, incorrect address information, or simply because they didn’t come from registered voters; historically, invalidation rates in Washington have ranged from as low as 8% to as high as 25%. (In some states, blatant acts of signature fraud have driven invalidation rates well over 50%.)
Assuming the 138,000 signature estimate is accurate, that means R-71 would fail to qualify for the ballot if a mere 12.7% of signatures are ruled invalid.
So what are R-71’s chances? Tim Eyman recently qualified I-1033 with a 12% invalidation rate, but that’s unusually low for him, and he does have more than a decade of experience running professional petition drives. Perhaps the R-71 petition drive was more centralized and organized than I thought, but I’d be slightly surprised to see them pull this one off with such a small cushion.
Regardless, there should be some fun coming out of Olympia later this week as the Sec. of State’s office goes through the tedium of matching every signature to the voter registration rolls. First they’ll count (and recount) the signatures to give them a starting point, and then they’ll go through the petitions line by line, reporting the number of valid signatures versus the number of invalid ones, giving us a running total of the invalidation rate up to that point, and thus the ever shifting odds on R-71’s ballot prospects. Once enough signatures have been qualified or disqualified to determine the outcome, the counting stops.
Stay tuned.
Here’s a link to the Protect Marriage folks. There you can see that they receive their political support from Republicans, including State Representatives Jim McCune and Matt Shea, as well as Republican State Senators Val Stevens and Dan Swecker. Supporters also include the late Ellen Craswell’s husband, Dr. Bruce Craswell. Throw in Rev. Ken Hutcherson and Gary Randall for good measure.
http://protectmarriagewa.com/
If it qualifies, will the HA Libtardos go nutzo, ranting and raving like the lunatics they are OR will they quietly complain against the initiative?
@2
And “quietly complaining” will accomplish exactly what?
Personally, I plan on going ape-shit.
Don’t people have anything better to do than spend their time trying to deny opportunity to gays?
We could put forth a petition to deny civil rights to people who signed the petition — because God told us to — but that would be unconstitutional.
I hope it does make the ballot so the people of WA can vote it down and these people can’t complain about being robbed.
@2….No, I won’t “go nutzo”, but in behalf of my sister and her partner I’ll be rather sad.
The government should not be in the marriage business at all, but since it is it needs to treat everyone the same. This thing should be defeated if it ever gets to a vote.
It’s 2009 and we’re really debating how old the earth is, if evolution is true and how we can protect marriage from the wraith of the Jewish mountain god Yahweh. Really? Are you nutballs serious?
Well, once we take care of the gay problem, we can get back to the blacks and Jews…they’re getting a bit uppity again.
Get f**king serious! We have REAL issues to deal with, we don’t have the time and luxury of dealing with magical imaginary ones. Jews think pork is an abomination. Muslims don’t like alcohol. The Amish think electricity isn’t what god wants. NEAT! Then go live your life and be happy not eating pork, drinking or using electricity. You GO girl! But stop trying to control my life you jackasses! Just because my life makes your invisible sky god angry isn’t my problem.
See what happens when religious nutballs get control of politics. If they’re Muslims they’ll ban alcohol, all porn, music (if conservative), etc. If Jewish, pork and working on the Sabbath, if Christian then gay marriage. You can ALL f**k off and leave me alone. I don’t belong to your little magical made up clubs. Live your life and bug off.
And before anyone starts to say this isn’t a debate about magic and politics…that there is some financial or legal reason why we can’t have gay marriage or even domestic partnership benefits…I’d remind you the opposition is NOT coming from Republican fiscal conservative think tanks, or using numbers or logic. This is about magic. 99% of the money and support for this is coming from the churches, not some ‘save tax dollars’ foundation. It’s magic not money.
If the opposition for this was entirely small business Republicans or something like that, there would be room for debate. But it’s 99% Church sponsored. So stop pretending this isn’t a totally made up childish debate over invisible beings.
I was approached by a signature gatherer while waiting in the ferry line this weekend, and I not only told him to go to hell, I also told him if it makes it to the ballot I’ll vote against it. How you like them apples, righties?
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
7. Blue collar libertarian spews:
The government should not be in the marriage business at all, but since it is it needs to treat everyone the same. This thing should be defeated if it ever gets to a vote.
Marriage is a contract. The state has an interest in its fulfillment / orderliness, leaving aside interests in any progeny and property transactions thereto.
That it is sanctified by a (STATE authorized) representative of the Bearded Sky God is optional — depending on the applicable delusion(s) of the parties.
One thing to keep in mind if R-71 gets to the ballot is that a yes vote approves benefits for same-sex partners and a no vote rejects them. It may seem counterintuitive, but since this would be a referendum, voters would be voting on the law as passed by the legislature. I hope it doesn’t get on the ballot, but if it does, I’ll be working to keep the enhanced domestic partnership benefits with yes vote. For more information, visit http://washingtonfamiliesstandingtogether.com/
@11, etc. Reading some of the responses like this one, I sometimes wonder if the whole evangelical anti-this-that-and-the-other-thing campaign is actually an extremely clever plan to divide progressives by pitting those of us whose liberalism is motivated by faith against those whose reaction to such issues is strident expressions of militant atheism.
ArtFart, what is “militant atheism”?
@13 Well….how about something like the last paragraph of post #11?
Granted, one implication of all this is that the churches are losing the last tiny, tenuous speck of their once broad-ranging civil authority–and they’ve been trying really hard to pretend that “sanctification” of marriage as a civil contract is now anything but ceremonial. If religions are to survive, they’ll have to give up on that and concentrate on making a case for faith in a higher power being of use in dealing with…well, yanno, real life.
What I am interested in knowing, that there were reports a week prior to the deadline, that they only had “about half” of the required signatures, and in under seven days, they doubled what they got in eight weeks.
That raises a very large red flag in my book about the legality of several of the newer signatures, and whether or not they legally gathered many of those signatures with the attached verbiage of the law. Any gathered signatures without said verbiage should have every one on the page immediately invalidated, as it is required to be there.
@ 7 writes: “Marriage is a contract. The state has an interest in its fulfillment / orderliness, leaving aside interests in any progeny and property transactions thereto.”
See a private legal type, write a contract if need be and handle it that way. We don’t need the government handing out licenses.
Actually @Blue collar… and @Artfart, I stated the facts and law based on several hundred years of precedent under common law.
It hasn’t been that long that regular folks even got “married”. Marriage was for the elites who had property and issues of succession to protect. Until relatively recently, regular folks just shacked up.
It is also interesting to note that even the Puritans required state sanctioned marriage, following long established legal precedent.
I get really sick of the christianist twisting of historical fact, especially in this regard. It’s one of the best examples of founder intent with regard to the separation of church and state.
Nevertheless, I just stated the facts, including the delusion part. If it’s “militant” to state the facts of the matter, then so be it.