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The Washington Secretary of State‘s office reports that the process of imaging the referendum petitions for the archives will conclude Wednesday. The Elections Division will next count the raw signatures and then begin the task of checking them against the voter records. “[I]t is likely that a full signature check will be required, rather than a speedier random-sample check”, said Sos spokesperson David Ammons, because only about 138,000 raw signatures were turned in. 120,577 valid signatures are needed to qualify the referendum for the ballot.
It falls to all of us to inform ourselves and our friends, family and co-workers about what the referendum does, and that if it comes to a vote we must VOTE “APPROVE” to preserve the Domestic Partnership Expansion Law of 2009 (SB 5688). Yes, I said APPROVE. This is due to the way the ballot was worded by the Attorney General:
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 ___
The ballot language is clear: if the referendum goes to the ballot and we VOTE TO APPROVE THE DP LAW, domestic partnerships in Washington state will be enhanced and have all the same state-level legal rights, responsibilities, and obligations as do civil marriages. If the law is rejected, DPs in Washington state will remain status quo.
There has been some misinformation that Referendum 71 is about giving same-sex couples marriage. This is false. Referendum 71 is about approving an incremental enhancement to existing DP law.
There has been some misinformation that if we don’t vote APPROVED, the entire DP system will be repealed. This is false. Referendum 71 is about approving an incremental enhancement to existing DP law. Existing DP law will remain intact no matter what.
There has been some misinformation that if we VOTE TO APPROVE THE DP LAW, schools will be forced to teach children that homosexuality is normal. This is false. There is nothing in the text of the law that mentions school curriculum.Join Washington Families Standing Together in their fight to defeat Referendum 71 by clicking on the graphics below.
Cross-posted at Washblog.
14 Comments
“There has been some misinformation”At what point do we get to say that the people who pushed for the referendum are lying? Active voice vs. passive voice.
Verification Process?It’s GREAT news that the SoS office is expecting to do a full-scale verification, rather than just a random sampling. Does anyone know what sort of procedures the SoS office actually goes through to verify the signatures? I assume they check them against a voter registration database, maybe even driver’s licensing records, but what else do they do, if anything?
Here’s how it works in Illinois – not sure what Washington’s requirements are:They check them against voter registration database. The signatures are on file and must match the signature on the petition. If your name appears as John Quincy Adams in the voter database, and the signature is J.Q. Adams, it may or may not fly in the verification process (usually not). Addresses must match exactly. If your address is on Elm Circle but you put down Elm Ave. – it’s invalid.
If you’ve moved since you last registered to vote, your signature is invalid if you used your new address. Sometimes, signatures are obvious forgeries, because the handwriting doesn’t even come close to matching.
Also, the petition circulator must be a registered voter in the State of Illinois – if not, that entire petition is invalidated. A duplicate or triplicate signature invalidates ALL signatures for that person. And there are a lot of people stupid enough to sign a petition several times over.
It’s meant to be a laborious process in order to keep frivolous items off the ballots. And if I know the religious right, they will do sloppy work in circulating petitions, just as they did in Illinois – their statewide advisory referendum on same-sex marriage was disqualified because of the ridiculously high (like 50%) number of invalid signatures.
It sounds like the proponents to this new law are the same prop h8 groups In California they gave the same three talking points:
Stop gay marriage
They will teach it in schools
Religious organizations will lose rights
About that time people will get all confused and then they hit you with the pièce de résistance:
“Don’t worry if you are confused just vote no. That way the gays don’t lose any rights–everything will go back to being the same. No harm no foul.”
If their is one thing these guys are its predictable. :/
Basically…From the Initiative and Referenda Handbook published by the Washington Secretary of State:
I believe the actual statistical method used is determined by how many signatures are submitted. I believe they check x signatures on each petition, with acceptance of those signatures putting y into the “valid” column. If the final count falls short, they might go back and check a different set of x signatures, with validated signatures (the previous set and the new set) adding y/2 signatures to the valid column. If the number of submitted signatures is very close to the required amount, however, they may decide that it would be quicker to validate all of the signatures.
In any case, the count stops once the minimum required number of signatures is validated: If the measure makes the ballot after looking at the first 7000 petitions, there is no need to inspect the remaining 5000.
Thank You!I appreciate the reference to the Washington handbook, as well as the description of Illinois process. Thanks, everyone!
I wonder if we have a designated rep already in place to monitor the validation process? I certainly hope so!
observersyes, i believe that our side has observers present.
Oh yes…And they’ll probably use the same talking points in WA! It isn’t even about marriage, but they’re already trying to confuse people by adding “the m word” into discussion as often as possible. It would be just like them to then tell people to “vote no if confused”. They really are such nasty @ssholes.
Yes, just say it…Just call them out on their lies! Don’t be mealy-mouthed or wishy-washy. Just expose them for the liars they are.
I’ve been saying so all along.Keep up, MHD! ;D
I don’t know that they’re the same peoplebut you’re right that they are certainly using the same lies and scare tactics. After all, those lies and scare tactics were successful. We must of course call them on their lies (that’s much of what Pam’s House Blend is about, after all), but in my mind the more fundamental problem is that too many people want to believe the worst about us. The lies are transparent to anyone who isn’t already looking for any excuse to hurt us or elevate themselves by diminishing us.
A note on observersWe have had issues in the past in Whitman County with ballots being invalidated due to signatures that “don’t match” based on claims that the handwriting is different. (By what I am sure is “pure coincidence”, this is always in favor of the conservative candidate or position.) As a result we almost always need to have observers present*.
Its boring, tedious work, so we always need quite a few volunteers as people who are bored or tired tend to miss mistakes.
In other words: If you can do it, VOLUNTEER to help out.
*As an added annoyance to Dems and Repubs alike, there is also no room for wheelchairs in the office where they count the ballots in Whitman County.
As a side notePhyllis got back an e-mail from our Congresswoman in response to her letter about inclusive ENDA which she swears is almost identical to the one she got from Vitters (when she lived in LA) the last time around. Unfortunately, she can’t find the one from Vitters to compare them.
I am curious as to whether our opposition really is just using slightly altered form letters in response to our issues or they are just alike because they are spewing the same talking points.
If anybody else is interested, I would be willing to put up a thread on my blog where people can post responses to our issues from their reps and we can compare them. It sure would be interesting to see whether they actually are that lazy (or well organized, depending on how you look at it).
I’m sure some of both happensThere are only so many ways to phrase the same fear-mongering lies, so I suspect that they will often come off sounding similar even if they don’t outright use the same templates. I also wouldn’t be surprised if various campaigns share the same mailing houses and/or employees that recycle stock verbiage or just naturally reproduce their own style of writing. One thing is certain, the people behind referendum 71 are either followers of or populate the local offices of Focus on the Family, Eagle Forum, Alliance Defense Council and Family Research Council. We shouldn’t be surprised then to see messages with a home office tinge emanating from the local operatives.