Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 6th, 2009
The Washington Secretary of State is now using two shifts to validate signatures for Referendum 71, the petition drive to halt the expansion of domestic partnership rights and place them on the ballot.
The Washington Secretary of State has compiled the results for the first shift for today (ending at 3:00 pm). Of the 3,831 signatures reviewed, 573 were rejected, a rate of 14.96%. This brings the total rejection rate up to 13.54%. Unless there is a drastic change in results, this petition is on its way to failure.
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David C.
August 6th, 2009
My heart bleeds peanut butter for them. The text of the remark I want to make lies outside of the BTB Comments Policy, and it is out of respect for this forum that I have refrained from uttering it here.
Dan
August 6th, 2009
Glad to see that the SoS has finally corrected itself on the minimum error rate.
I am not quite ready to declare victory, what with more than 100,000 names to be checked. But the deeper we go into the count, the less likely it is that the anti’s can make up the deficit. Indeed, the deficit is growing, and we have yet to hit a patch (which I am sure is coming) that is closer to the historical average error rate of 18%.
How sweet will it be if it winds up that these douchebags paid for all these signatures only to fail by a few thousand names? Every dollar wasted on this is one less dollar that will go to hurt gay people somewhere else.
Dan
August 6th, 2009
Timothy:
When and if R71 goes down, that will leave Maine as THE big battle remaining for 2009. Indeed, it is probably the biggest story of 2009 – the East Coast equivalent of Proposition 8. There is no question that our adversaries see it that way.
Yet there is very little meaningful coverage about what is going on. This is the most undercovered story of the day.
What is our side doing? We know we were beaten in last month’s fundraising reports, but what effort has been made to contact the people who ponied up for Prop 8? I mean David Geffen and Ellen DeGeneres and Brad Pitt and Tim Gill and Jared Polis and the teachers’ union and on and on? What is this group of leaders doing on a day to day basis to avoid the miserable outcome we suffered in 2008? Would BTB consider calling these people and doing an in-depth post?
Timothy Kincaid
August 6th, 2009
Dan,
I agree that Maine has very little coverage. I have few contacts in Maine and thus coverage is difficult for me.
I do plan on putting in some effort to try and give some reporting but at the moment I’m very busy with some deadlines for my real job and Jim is traveling where his access is spotty.
We hope to provide more as time goes on but can’t make any specific promises at this time.
homer
August 6th, 2009
Well somebody wasted a boatload on money that could have been better spent feeding children or helping poor folks.
grantdale
August 6th, 2009
Timothy, I know you love numbers. (Who doesn’t???) And I know you’re always uncomfortable without knowing a confidence interval. (Who isn’t???).
At current count (27288 reviewed), and conservatively moving all of the 84 “pending” into the “accepted”… a (simplistic) binomial proportion estimation gives the following.
Using a 95% ci
118915 < accepted < 120022
Using a 99% ci
118741 < accepted < 120196
They need 120577. As the (currently small) number of those rejected as “duplicates” can be expected to proportionally rise as the count continues… this indicates the initiative will fail to go forward. Possibly only by a squeak.
(Don’t ask for a more rigorous estimation of the proportion or for hypothesis testing of achieving the 120577. I have the flu.)
Dan
August 6th, 2009
Thanks Tim! There is no blog better suited to doing real coverage on this than BTB!
When you have time to turn to it, may I suggest that – even if you have few of your own contacts – it would be helpful to just call up the head honcho on No on 1, Jesse Connolly, and just put to him the hard questions. Nothing requiring him to divulge campaign tactics of course, but rather questions confirming that they are doing the basic, critical things that No on 8 failed to do (e.g., Get-out-the-vote that includes Election Day transportation, pro-active media campaign, genuine field work in every county, use of all available interested volunteers).
David C.
August 6th, 2009
While we are on the subjects or R71 and Prop 8, note that at least one California marriage equality group, Courage Campaign, is soliciting contributins in a bid to raise $200,000 to
This group wants to decide if there is support for placing “a marriage equality initiative on the ballot in 2010 — and to help build the movement to support it.”
Clearly, the battle is ongoing in California, and the competition for money and other resources remains keen. This points to a need for better national coordination, but failing that, campaigns need to recognize that the economic climate is such that resource competition is going to be as demanding as the ideological warfare it enables.
Unfortunately, in Maine we do not control the timing, our opponents have made that decision for us, however the marriage equality movement needs to take into consideration the national scope of the effort where it does have the option of selecting the time as it does in California and elsewhere.
Dan
August 7th, 2009
@David C.-
I think those are excellent points. Maine is not an island unto itself. If we lose there (which I would say is the more likely outcome as of right now), then that will have a deleterious effect on CA and on other states (NY, NJ) that might be considering granting marriage equality. If we lose, it will bolster the other side’s strongest argument: the people reject SSM in every state in which it is voted upon. On the other hand, if we can pull out a win, it will shatter that argument and give a big boost to the folks in CA and elsewhere. It would signal that the momentum really has shifted in our favor.
That is precisely why Maine is the titanic clash of 2009 and should out-prioritize everything else. And I say that as a non-Mainer.
TomChicago
August 7th, 2009
So, the game seems to be to get the number of signatures past the counters. If there are this many disqualified signatures, it must be a very shady endeavor. Perhaps the message will get through to those who are trying so stubbornly to stop us that there is not the authentic will in our country to merely spite our efforts, since our efforts do not, once and for all, diminish their marriages.
Désirée
August 7th, 2009
to Tom:
actually, that’s the “game” with any petition drive, not just this one or GLBT-related ones, but all of them. That’s why they know what the historical error margin is and why signature gatherers always try to get a large enough cushion. Nothing inherently shady about that. If anything, so far, this petition has had a lower disqualification rate than the historical average for the district.
KZ
August 7th, 2009
No. I will not say anything sarcastic about feeling bad for Washington’s anti-gays. This Referendum 71 is a complete waste of money, time, and manpower. homer posted exactly what I have been thinking for the past few days. I will be a loss for more than just gays and lesbians if R-71 has enough signatures. The good news is that whether or not R-71 pulls through and Washington’s DP law is repealed, attitudes are changing. LaBarbera’s and Gallagher’s goals will appear more desperate and pathetic.
John
August 7th, 2009
This is some of the best news I’ve read all week!!! Wouldn’t it be great if one of these hateful resolutions went down in flames? What would the conservatiives do then???
“Let the people vote”? Apparently, they don’t WANT TO!!!
Burr
August 7th, 2009
If they miss out on this, could they just push it again?
Timothy Kincaid
August 7th, 2009
Burr,
No, they can’t.
This proposition is due to a peculiarity of Washington law. In that state if a legislature passes a law, opponents can collect signatures to put it on hold until it is voted on by the citizens.
This proposition is in response to a bill. If they don’t have enough signatures it becomes law.
They could make a future attempt to reverse the law by initiative, but by then the DP enhancement would have been in place. And the sky wouldn’t have fallen.
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