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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
They're just fighting because they have nothing else to do.
I also support stickering/flyering the city and region to let people know what they are really signing.
Filed: 05/04/2009
Sponsor
Mr. Lawrence Stickney
P.O. Box 501
Arlington, WA 98223
Phone: 360-631-1894
lstickney@valuesaction.orgReferendum
Subject
SB 5688
---------------------
So it's on like Donkey Kong. Is Lambda Legal and ERW going to head down to Thurston County to get this started tomorrow? Or is the Attorney General or a Legislator going to step in?
We need some guidance, here.
The Durt-tee Bast-tard!!!!
Unless you're driving down to Thurston County yourself to file the petition to have the ballot reviewed, you're in no place to accuse anyone of being asleep at the wheel.
Having faced numerous anti gay ballot efforts, the usual folks will file quickly with excellent attorneys on our side.
The point of interest is the signature drive and if, if, the bigots can get money to pay for the signatures.??
I fear post Calif. they can.
Stay informed and ready to help our side with work and tons of money.
By. Been There
I looked into publishing names of petition signatories on the web ala KnowThyNeighbor.org about three years ago and Tom Lang from KTN was very helpful. There are some logistical challenges as Washington State checks only a small percentage of signatures against the electronic voter registration database (VRDB).
Unless the rules have changed, a public record request will get you an electronic copy of the checked sample, but the balance needs to be photocopied and provided on paper. These unchecked signatures would need to be entered into a database manually and resolved against the VRDB before they could be displayed on the map.
Massachusetts has it easier since they validate every signature at local election offices (no cheesy sampling for them) and roll them up electronically to the state level. A public record request gets you *all* the signatures in electronic format ready to import into a database and be geo-coded on the map.
I even went so far as to get a copy of the voter registration database to see how easy it would be to import the data into SQL and map it. The initiative failed and I didn’t need to pull the trigger.
There was a strange coda to this effort…
In September 2008 I got a phone call from someone who said they were and auditor from the Washington State government. They claimed to be doing a satisfaction survey and wanted to know what I was using the Washington State VRDB for. When I became suspicious and asked them to send me their request in writing, the caller became angry and threatening. He asked me if I still lived at my home address in Seattle and told me “Don’t worry, you’ll be seeing me in person” before hanging up abruptly.
I reported the incident to the Elections Division at the Washington Secretary of State’s office. A number of people who had also requested copies of the Washington State VRDB received similar threatening or harassing phone calls. It turns out just one person had asked for a list of people with the VRDB as part of a public information request. The requestor, Martin Leahy, is the President of “Shield of Green Incorporated” which sells an anti-junk mail subscription service. The pieces began falling into place.
The matter was referred to the Detective Russ Haake at Washington State Patrol. It seems that there was no way to tie the calls to the originating caller so it was impossible to know who the caller was. Occam’s Razor says that it was likely Leahy or one of his agents. In the course of the investigation Detective Haake had scheduled to meet with Leahy but at the last moment Leahy cancelled the meeting and the investigation was closed.
It makes me feel are warm and moist inside to suspect that a privacy advocate who is supposedly a stickler for the letter and spirit of the law has so little trouble ignoring them when it suits him.
Sorry to deflate your gas bag - but - the persuasion to WIN is of real voters, not who signed what.
The populist nature of the referendum and the initiative in this State, enshrined pieces of our statehood, mean tons of people sign so it can go to the people.
You are toying with serious backlash stuff - there will be plenty of real villans to work against, not petition signers.
Decline to sign in King county is an option - and will force them to go to churches and eastern Washington, a harder task.
1. Government ALLOWS its citizens to vote AGAINST a minority's due civil rights.
2. Without these rights, horrible suffering often happens, and why not? Everyone else seems to need these rights civil rights, so why NOT us?
more here:
http://gaytaxprotest.blogspot.com/2009/0…
"4. Hate crimes laws were enacted within months of the passage of same-sex marriage in Canada. The federal "Hate Crimes Bill" passed the U.S. House on Thursday of this week. We may be running out of time to address this issue without fear of jail time. I believe it would be foolish to wait another 10 months to two years to run an initiative under the current circumstances."
Quick! Get your hate crimes in while they're still legal!
the best result of our anger, energy and vision for a better future - well - beat the crap out of them at the ballot box
I am going to register voters this weekend in my neighborhood - not going to wait for the downtown queers to tell everybody to send a check
that will come soon without fail
As a professional signature gatherer I worked the "Yes on 8" intiative denying the gay population the right to use the word marriage as a legal name for their unions.
As a professional I was hoping the gays would have a counter initiative. Instead they hurt their cause badly. Instead of behaving correctly as the Christens did, they reacted with hate and violence.
It was the most violent campaign I have worked on. Homosexuals routinely tried to stop voters from signing. Violating other people right of democracy did not bother gays. Homosexuals did not care about other peoples rights, only selfishly about their own. Several times I was physically assaulted, resulting me having to beat the hell out of 2 gay haters and having them arrested.
What really changed, was my atitiude towards the community. Previously, it was a love did not understand and as long as I was not affected and children not being harmed, it was simply not my business.
That all changed with Prop. 8.
Painting swatikas on churches. Disrupting church services. Intimidating people for their religious beliefs.
This is the stuff of Nazi's did to the Jews,The stuff of facism.There was a strong strain of homosexuality in the National Socialist movement
What next gassing Christens? Cristal Nacht?
. I see that same strain of vitriol and hate in the comments on this blog. My father fought racist, facsist Nazi's and so will I.
Gays have hurt thier cause. , it has galvanised people like me to defend democracy. In that light, I will bring my crew of professional signature gatherers in and I will guantee a minimum of 25,000 valid signatures to fight gay hate. See ya on the battlefield!
This is going to fun!
You're going to travel to Washington from California? With the purpose of gathering signatures for a referendum, that has no impact on you personally, that seeks to strip people, who were not involved in your California experience, of equal rights their state government has granted?
So, I met up with a friend I used to work with who was laid off by ERW [recently]. He was actually XXXXX's direct supervisor until that point, a Field Organizer. We talked for several hours and he just totally went off on ERW top-down organizing style.
Part of his job was to try and organize things with smaller groups around the state. He told me that the problem is that ERW continually fucks people over because they're only really concerned with where the money is coming from, though they put up a front that they want to help the community. As an effect, he said that he'd have people from these different community groups calling him all the time cussing him out because ERW would last minute decide that plans with a certain group weren't profitable, and would just get the order to ditch out on them. He said that it felt like 80% of the groups they would work with would be so angry at them, because they were really only worried about the most profitable 20%: the big donaters.
He also said that he felt bad for the people that worked there because they're massively overworked and underpaid, working on average 60 hours a week, and more during big events. The bosses don't listen to the suggestions of any of the volunteers, but give orders to them based upon the wants of those with the dollars.
So basically I'm saying that our assessment of ERW as a top-down, conservative organization is pretty accurate, straight from the horse's mouth itself. Should we still work with them, yes. But should we be prepared for them to fuck us over if we can't bring them money? Yes. Let's just be as careful with them as possible. This is why I personally prefer a grassroots approach in which all of our opinions are valid and help shape the outward focus of the groups' activities. We're not tied down to donations, and they are. This is also why they're not prepared to "rock the boat", and why we have a very important role to play in building this movement."