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It’s been apparent from the outset that Referendum 74 will qualify for the November ballot. After all, very few referendum campaigns don’t collect the required 120,577 voter signatures since it is such a low percentage of the total registered voters in the state. Once on the ballot, R-74 will ask voters to approve or reject Washington’s recently-passed civil marriage equality law.
So the question isn’t whether the measure will qualify, but how its support stacks up to other ballot measures. Not very well, it would seem. This despite having hired paid signature gatherers up to four weeks ago and getting an assist from shady “on spec” collectors.
In recent years, initiative campaigns on a wide range of subjects including death with dignity, taxes, transportation and liquor sales have routinely filed more than 300,000 signatures, with only 30 days more to collect signatures than referenda campaigns have. Over 408,000 signatures were filed in 2010 to put a “candy and bottled water” tax repeal initiative on the ballot.
National Organization for Marriage’s big cheese himself set the goal of turning in 200,000 Referendum 74 signatures on May 6th, one month before the deadline.
“I want the headline above the fold that says ‘R-74 gets 200,000 signatures a month early!’. I want to shut up our opponents. …Because our opponents – this is a battle, and our opponents need to be demoralized,” Chris Plante told a group of volunteers in March. Plante is a Rhode Island-based NOM employee sent to Washington to act as Preserve Marriage Washington’s deputy campaign director.
“I’ve been saying, on May 6th I’d love to put out a press release saying, the human part of me says ‘nah-nah-na-na-nah’, we got the signatures,” Plante told volunteers at a similar event in April. “Something to the effect of ‘Washington will not stand for messing with marriage’.”
It’s now weeks later and not only has NOM-PMW failed to meet their goal of filing 200,000 signatures on May 6th, but it appears unlikely that they will even have 200,000 signatures to file by the June 6th deadline. If NOM-PMW had any kind of meaningful support in Washington, they should have had no problem accomplishing this fall-back goal.
Once again, the national anti-gay groups will learn that Washington doesn’t have much interest in their attempts to overturn our laws.
8 Comments
Incredible.
Wow! Does this mean that it might not even make the ballot?
It’ll almost certainly get on the ballot, but they’re having to work much, much harder to get it there than they thought they would.
Referendum 71, the attempt to overturn the everything but marriage law, got on the ballot with less than a 3,000 signature cushion. Last I heard NOM had collected about 100,000 signatures. I have no doubt it will get on the ballot, but I’d be a little surprised if there were 200,000 signatures. Correction: a 1,500 signature cushion.
Of course, don’t forget the cushion of extra signatures is meant to offset the inevitability that some, or even many signers will be invalid. Some people will be indecipherable, some sign “Mickey Mouse” or something just to be done with it, some are not registered as voters.
If they fail to get on the ballot it might be because of that, too many invalid signers and not enough cushion.
But I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that. They will probably get on the ballot. But it’s still a bad bellwether for how their campaign will find recruits in the fall.
One thing that is probably slowing them down this time is that Washingtonians know that their identity will be made public if they sign the petitions for Referendum 74. In 2009, the religious right in Washington tried to overturn domestic partnerships with Referendum 71. At that time, they assured petition signers that their identity would be kept secret. They fought Washington State all the way to the Supreme Court trying to keep the signatures secret where they lost resoundingly in an 8 to 1 decision June 24, 2010 that the signatures must be disclosed Doe v. Reed, with only Thomas dissenting.
NetAmigo,
That would be my thought also. I hope it actually doesn’t get on the ballot, so we don’t even have to discuss it. It adds stress onto friends, who just want to live their life like everybody else does.
Clarknt67,
Yes, it’s a bad bellwether, but we’ve got other forces at play. This is a gubernatorial election year, and Rob McKenna (R) is popular, he’s probably going to get a lot of DINOs, which gives a bit of a boost to the pro-R74 crowd.
NetAmigo makes a very good point about public information. Hopefully it’ll be a big enough influence against R74.