Confusion in Washington – Anti-Gay Petition May be Valid

Timothy Kincaid

August 10th, 2009

We were tracking and reporting on the Washington Secretary of State’s efforts to verify signatures presented for Referendum 71, a response to the legislature’s extension of benefits to domestic partners. And we were reporting that the petitions did not appear to have an adequate validation rate to make it to the ballot.

But we were under the mistaken assumption that the Washington Secretary of State was reporting the final determination of each signature. It turns out that they were reporting tentative rejections and not those who had been validated at the supervisor level. And the supervisors have reinstated enough signatures to significantly reduce the rejection rate.

As of the Friday day shift, the state has reviewed 35,296 signatures and rejected 4,063, a rejection rate of 11.51%. If correct, this would be a rejection rate low enough to allow the referendum to reach the ballot. If what I have read is correct, it would also set a record for the cleanest petition ever.

However, I’m not puting too much faith in this calculation. Currently the state is reporting a total number of signatures checked that is lower than the sum of those checked on a daily basis. This suggests to me that the reporting process is ruled by confusion.

David C.

August 10th, 2009

I wonder if there was a second Friday (swing) shift. Anyway, let’s see what happens after 4:30 PM today on the Verifying Signatures for Referendum 71 page you link to above.

David C.

August 10th, 2009

Washington State Sos appears to be revising it’s presentation of R-71 petition verification results.

Cole

August 10th, 2009

Election officials are rigging the election. Watch out everyone the election officials are trying their best to get this anti-gay initiative on the ballot so your rights are taken away. As soon as the signature vote wasn’t going the anti-gay bigots way the numbers got “readjusted” and now that the elections officials have been caught and called out on their suspicious activity they are hiding the process.

Lurleen

August 11th, 2009

Let’s leave nothing to chance. To preserve the new domestic partnership law, be prepared to vote APPROVED in November. Sign up with Washington Families Standing Together at http://approvereferendum71.org to help get the word out.

Referendum 71 voters will be asked to approve or reject the domestic partnership law.

REFERENDUM 71 Ballot Title
Statement of Subject: The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners [and voters have filed a sufficient referendum petition on this bill].

Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.

Should this bill be:

Approved ___
Rejected ___

tavdy79

August 11th, 2009

35,296 petitions checked is about a quarter of the 137,689 submitted. Assuming all duplicates are evenly spread throughout the petition, we can expect roughly ten times as many duplicates as have been uncovered so far – there have been 146 in the first quarter, so there’s likely to be 280-300 in the second, 420-450 in the third, and 560 to 600 in the fourth. That adds up to a total of 1400 to 1500 duplicates – around 1% of the total. Currently duplicates make up 0.4%, so duplicates should shift the number of rejections up by 0.6% – from 11.5% to 12.1% That leaves a 0.3% margin, or around 1000 signatures.

That looks like a bloody close margin to me.

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