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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyAugust 11th, 2009
The Washington Secretary of State has a new reporting method by which they will wait until supervisors have reviewed and corrected the rejections made by checkers of signatures before they post the results. Based on the finalized review so far, 33,214 have been checked and 3,450 rejected for a fail rate of 10.39%.
Unless the remaining three quarters of signatures are very different from the first quarter, this referendum will qualify for the ballot. And it may set a new record for cleanest petition ever submitted in the state.
At present there is no way to determine if the signatures are being reviewed in any particular order. If they are in collection order, then there is a possibility that they will be less clean as time goes on.
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Penguinsaur
August 11th, 2009
So… what did we ever do to the people of Washington to get their ire? Their has to be something. I’ve never seen someone actually sign a petition, much less one for something that will never affect them in any way.
Mark F.
August 11th, 2009
OK, folks. 2 battles to win at the ballot box next year. Can we do it?
Timothy Kincaid
August 11th, 2009
Mark,
Washington’s battle is this November
Dan
August 11th, 2009
Tim:
The latest stats are out. The error rate continues to drop. It is now at only 10.42%, two percentage points below the allowable error rate. If this continues, R71 will qualify for the ballot. And we will have both this and Maine to contend with in approximately 2 1/2 months.
It is glaringly obvious why the error rate has dropped from over 13% on Thursday to just 10.42% today. The Secretary of State is double checking initially rejected signatures only and the double check is saving hundreds from the reject pile. But he is not doing the same double check on the initially accepted signatures. So, not surprisingly, the shift is all one way. A skewed process is achieving a skewed result.
Even more amazing is that the Secretary of State’s spokesperson has admitted that this is a feature, not a bug. Apparently, they think that it is acceptable to allow for selective inaccuracies in the review process, so long as such inaccuracy assists the proposed referendum in qualifying.
This is illegal, unfair, and troubling.
Cole
August 11th, 2009
Election officials are rigging the election.
On August 6, 2009 after five days of counting the rejected signature rate was over 14% well over the 12.4% needed to pass. The next day all of a sudden master fixers I mean “checkers†changed the numbers and the rejected signature rate moved a massive 19%. Here we are again today looking at the SAME signatures and the numbers moving another massive 10%. Election officials have looked at the SAME signatures four times and have come up with four different numbers all of thems lower than the last.
Elise
August 11th, 2009
Well damn. You know, I’ve followed these anti-gay referendums in other states, but it feels different now that it’s finally hit my own backyard. (Yeah, there was the ’96 gay marriage ban, but I was in middle school at the time. In fact, I remember my teacher at my Christian school of the time instructing me to write “thank you” letters to conservative politicians thanking them for protecting marriage, and I totally did it. Wow. Different lifetime.)
Anyway, I want to keep my hopes up, but I’m starting to prepare for the likelihood that this is going to make it onto the ballot in my own wonderful, laid-back, crunchy granola state. Et tu, Washington? I guess there’s nothing to do but role up my sleeves and start defending my not-quite-marriage rights.
AJD
August 11th, 2009
Should we be surprised? I’ve never doubted that there’s a lot more people out there who hate us than we think; they just don’t admit it publicly.
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but I have this nagging feeling that Ref. 71 will both make the ballot for November and win, along with the one in Maine. After Prop. 8, I’ve learned not to be optimistic about the near-future prospects of gay rights in America. Like African-Americans, Native Americans, women and others, gays have to suffer for rights that others are born with.
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