Here in Washington State, we are having our own Prop 8 moment. There are some important differences between Prop 8 and Referendum 71, which will be on November’s ballot (unless Washington Families Standing Together’s lawsuit, described after the jump, is successful):

• To support the rights of same-sex couples, you have to vote to APPROVE R-71.
• Washington legislators and our Governor have not approved marriage, just inclusion in all of the state laws and codes that apply to marriage. The law is referred to as “everything but marriage,” because in every way registered domestic partners in our state will have the same rights as married people. We just won’t be called married.
• We’re going to win.

Now, I’m not a big supporter of half-measures. I believe that domestic partnership is a separate-but-equal policy. Civil unions are bullshit, Mr. President, unless everyone gets them, not just the queers.

(That would probably be my preference, if I were running this place. Anyone who wanted to get married could do so in their place of worship. The states would have the power to perform civil unions only. And as far as special rights for those who had civil unions, I think those are questionable. But if you’re going to give them to some people, you’d better give them to everyone. But I digress….)

Two days ago, the WA Secretary of State’s office announced that the number of signatures needed to get Referendum 71 on the ballot had been reached. This was, coincidentally, the day before Vermont’s everything-AND-marriage law went into effect, making Vermont the sixth state to grant marriages to same-sex couples. One step forward….

The Back Story
Early this year, a large majority of the WA House and Senate passed the everything-but-marriage bill. Shortly after that, Governor Chris Gregoire signed it. The religious right, led by the repulsive Larry Stickney, got riled up and launched a signature-gathering campaign to get Referendum 71 on the ballot. The referendum asks voters whether or not to approve the law that was already passed and signed via our legislative process, and of course the intention of the referendum is to repeal the law. Washington Families Standing Together (WAFST) countered with a decline to sign campaign.

Stickney’s signature-gathering campaign–and even the petition itself–was rife with lies and misrepresentations (see here and here for examples). The group also tried to challenge public disclosure laws regarding referendum signers, attempting to keep the people who signed to get it on the ballot secret. They failed, and soon all of the people who signed (and everyone else, i.e. public disclosure) will be able to see their names on the WhoSigned.org website. Considering all the subterfuge that went on in the signature gathering process, I’m sure there are many people who didn’t know what they were signing.

On September 1, the Secretary of State’s office announced that Referendum 71 had enough signatures to be placed on the ballot in November, counting 122,007 signatures as valid, a scant margin of 1,430 more than necessary to qualify.

I don’t believe that the signatures were gathered honestly. I don’t believe that they gathered enough to put the referendum on the ballot. Neither does WAFST–they filed a lawsuit to challenge a couple of ways in which the Secretary of State’s office ignored Washington State law and approved signatures that should have been rejected.

In short, here are the complaints:

1. Paid signature gatherers misled people into signing the petition (like in the video linked above).
2. Every signature gatherer is required to sign an anti-fraud statement saying that a) they personally circulated the petition, b) that to the best of the gatherer’s knowledge every person who signed did so willingly, with his or her true name, without compensation, and provided only true information on the petition, and c) that the individual understands that to offer compensation or forge signatures is breaking the law and they could be fined or imprisoned. 2,058 signatures from signature gatherers who did not sign the anti-fraud statement were accepted by the Secretary of State.
3. Only registered voters can sign referendum petitions. The SoS’s office accepted signatures from people who were registered to vote at the time of the signature check, but not at the time of the signing of the petition.
4. Stickney’s henchmen were observed by SoS employees stamping Larry Stickney’s signature on the anti-fraud declaration of many petitions just before submitting the signatures to the SoS. If he didn’t personally circulate these petitions, this constitutes fraud–and I’d bet my very bottom dollar that he didn’t. The SoS accepted 33,966 signatures with Stickney’s stamp on the back of the petition.
5. The WAFST observers of the signature verification process noticed what they perceived to be errors on the part of the verifiers, but their concerns were repeatedly ignored by the SoS.

Since I began writing this blog post this morning, the Seattle Times reports that Judge Julie Spector of King County Superior Court rejected the lawsuit–not on the grounds of its merits, which she supports, but on the grounds that the lawsuit needs to be filed in Thurston County, where the Secretary of State’s offices are.

“Tens of thousands of signatures may have been invalid because declarations on some petitions – attesting that voters were not paid or wrongly induced to provide their signatures – were left blank, or simply rubber-stamped moments before being turned in, the judge said….

‘The court notes that the plain language of the Washington State Constitution and the Revised Code of Washington requires voters to be registered before signing,’ Spector wrote. ‘While it may be common practice for individuals to register simultaneously with signing referendum petitions, and it may even be good policy, that does not mean that the practice is in accordance with Washington law.’

Washington courts haven’t considered that issue, but other state supreme courts ‘have decided resoundingly against the secretary of state’s position,’ the judge said.

And finally, Spector noted, some people were apparently lied to by signature gatherers, who told them, for example, that the expanded domestic partnership benefits would force public schools to ‘teach that same-sex marriage and homosexuality are normal … even over the objections of parents.’”

We will see how the lawsuit fares in Thurston County, where the judges may be slightly more conservative than here in King County.

I want to talk here about how this law will affect my family in particular when it goes into effect, whether because R-71 is rejected from the November ballot or because our voting population approves the referendum. But I think that’s the subject of another post. Sorry for such a long-winded first post, but this is a complex and multi-faceted battle, and I wanted to do it justice.

If you vote in Washington State, and you see this referendum on your ballot, please vote APPROVE. Our family thanks you.

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