Because the twice-daily updated signature validation numbers are of ongoing and intense interest for some of us, I will bump this updated diary to the top of the page each afternoon (Pacific time) after the previous morning's results have been released. All the action will remain below the fold so as to keep the diary profile slender. Last updated: 4:32 pm Friday, August 7, 2009. Data are provisional!
August 10th: been wondering where the promised updates are?
The Sec'y of State is just a leetle behind the reporting schedule they set up for us, and even their blog seems to be offline this afternoon. The operator at the Elections Division told me this afternoon that there would be no further updates until Tuesday afternoon. This is of course annoying for we number watchers, but it does provide a good opportunity to remind everyone that we can take nothing for granted and need to keep planning for the ballot no matter what. As it happens, I just got this topical email from Equal Rights Washington.
Below is an update on the latest developments for Referendum 71 and Washington Families Standing Together. Many of you have been asking how you can help. Beginning today, WAFST will run weekly phone banks from the ERW and WAFST offices at 7th and Columbia in downtown Seattle.Please send an email to volunteer@wafst.org to participate in one or more phonebanking days or evenings. Hours for phone banks are Monday through Thursday, 10am until 8 pm, and Friday, from 10 am until 5 pm. Additional questions or immediate scheduling can be directed to Kate Fredenberg by phone at (206) 324-2570. We also ask those who are able to bring personal laptops or cell phones to use during your phonebank session.
As our coalition moves forward, we ask that you make a personal commitment thrent through both financial support and volunteering your time. Join us for this important work.
Sincerely,
Connie Watts
Executive DirectorCONTRIBUTE CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Washington Families Standing Together (WAFST), the campaign to retain the Domestic Partnership law, has had teams of observers every day from 7:30am to 10:00pm in Olympia monitoring the signature vote count. Please contribute today so that WAFST can continue to vigorously work on behalf of Washington families.
Remember, there is a very low threshold in Washington State to qualify a referendum for the ballot. Even with that low number of signatures needed, because so few were turned in by those trying to repeal the Domestic Partnership law, the Secretary of State must review every signature. WAFST will have trained observers there every day, three shifts a day, until every signature has been checked.
CONTRIBUTE The signature verification process has three steps to it, and the initial numbers reported in the press and on line were based only on the initial step. After signatures are initially checked, any that appear to be invalid are re-checked, and can be added back as valid, if additional information is found. The third step is that counties are consulted to see if they have voters on file who are not in the statewide database. If so, those are added back as well. That's why initial numbers change as the process continues. It will take until the week of August 17 or later before this multi-step review is completed.
That means, if the Secretary of State determines there are enough valid signatures, there will be fewer than 8 weeks before mail-in ballots for the November election will start going out to voters. We cannot sit back and wait. WAFST is moving forward with fund raising, voter contact, social networking, media and all of the other critical elements of a campaign. The WAFST coalition now includes more than 130 organizations and continues to grow daily.
CONTRIBUTE Today we ask you to make a meaningful contribution to the campaign so that we are all doing our part to keep the religious right from rolling back the Domestic Partnership Law. This law protects thousands of families all across Washington State. If Referendum 71 is on the ballot, voters will be asked whether they want to APPROVE or reject the law. To keep the law, we have to make sure voters know they vote to APPROVE it.
Key rights and obligations in the law include death benefits for the partners of police and firefighters killed in the line of duty, pension benefits for the partners of teachers and other public employees, victims' rights, including the right to receive notifications and benefits allowances, the right to use sick leave to care for a seriously ill partner, to have workers' compensation benefits if a partner is killed in the course of employment, to receive unemployment benefits if an employee must leave a job to care for a seriously ill partner and to adopt a partner's child without paying for a home study.
Phone Bank Volunteers Needed: We have already started phone banking out of our Seattle office. We are calling Monday-Thursday 10am-8pm, Friday, 10am-5pm. If you live outside Seattle we do have the ability to allow people to do phone banking from their homes and in the future will have other phone bank locations. If you would likuld like to volunteer sign up by e-mailing - volunteer@wafst.org or calling 206-324-2570.
CONTRIBUTE Together we will win
Joshua Friedes
Campaign Manager Washington
Families Standing TogetherPS: Click here to download our approve Referendum 71 placard that you can hang in your window or post at your favorite coffee shop. Use this as your personal image on Facebook:
The Washington Secretary of State is now posting all the results of the Referendum 71 signature validation effort to-date here. Starting August 6th, they added a 2nd shift of signature checkers to accelerate the process. The day shift works from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the swing shift will work from 3:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Adjusted Totals as of 4:32 pm Friday, August 7, 2009:
| Signatures Checked | Signatures Accepted | Signatures Currently Rejected | Percent of Signatures Currently Rejected (does not include Signatures Currently Pending) | Signatures Currently Pending |
| 35,296 | 31,199 | 4,063 | 11.51% | 34 |
My Barometer of Petition's Progress. Numbers valid on 8/7/2009 only.
| Approved | Invalid | |
| Break point | 120,577 | 17,113 |
| % towards break point | 25.87 | 23.74 |
Notes:
August 7. 409 Rejected signatures were transferred into the Accepted category after review by a master checker. Additionally, apparently most or all of the Missing signatures have now been validated and moved into the Accepted category too. This pulls the current average invalidation rate down to 11.63%, meaning that at the moment, the referendum looks like it may qualify for the ballot. Repeat it with me: IT'S NOT OVER UNTIL IT'S OVER - Go to WAFST.org to help us prepare for the November ballot.
Due the the post-master checker numbers differing from the daily provisional tally, I'll start reporting the running totals supplied but the Elections Division rather than calculating them from the provisional numbers.
Summary of the Provisional Daily Tallies:
| Date | Checked | Accepted | Invalid | Duplicates | No Match | Not Found | Missing | % Invalid |
| 31-Jul | 5,646 | 4,991 | 655 | 7 | 41 | 592 | 15 | 11.34 |
| 3-Aug | 5,856 | 5,096 | 760 | 16 | 40 | 682 | 22 | 12.98 |
| 4-Aug | 5,815 | 4,980 | 835 | 22 | 69 | 732 | 12 | 14.36 |
| 5-Aug | 6,140 | 5,268 | 872 | 23 | 71 | 758 | 20 | 14.20 |
| 6-Aug | 6,483 | 5,548 | 935 | 45 | 128 | 742 | 20 | 14.42 |
| 7-Aug (AM) | 5,926 | 5,161 | 765 | 33 | 116 | 604 | 12 | 12.91 |
Remember, WE ARE NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET. There may still be batches of very clean signatures yet awaiting the validation process.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related:
* Referendum 71 signature validation update: Day 3 & 4
* Random Numbers
* The Skinny on DP Dissolution Rates in Washington State
Referendum 71 voters will be asked to approve or reject the domestic partnership law.
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 ___Ballot Measure Summary
Same-sex couples, or any couple that includes one person age sixty-two or older, may register as a domestic partnership with the state. Registered domestic partnerships are not marriages, and marriage is prohibited except between one man and one woman. This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of registered domestic partners and their families to include all rights, responsibilities, and obligations granted by or imposed by state law on married couples and their families.
PRINT AND DISTRIBUTE HANDOUTS AND PLACARDS !
Bring out the tiny violin...Joe at Amplify received a letter from a desperate Focus On Your Family begging for cash:"Right now we're facing a serious budget shortfall that threatens our ability to reach out to parents, families and married couples who count on our help. Income is down nearly $6 million from what we expected and planned for this year."Oh my, why isn't God looking out for the organization founded by Daddy D to save America from the evils of ho-mo-sexuality, fornication and reproductive rights?! Damn, are they not praying enough? Oh that's right, they are so busy peeping into everyone's business that they forgot to drop on their knees to ask for protection of "the God-ordained covenant between one man and one woman."
The other problem is the FOTF's donor base is now probably on the dole and eating Alpo because of the sh*tty shape Holy Dear Leader left the economy in when he took off in the helicopter to fly back to Texas and away from the mess he made.
I couldn't be more surprised to find out that I'm apparently now the honest to gawd, serious "face" for the second tier religious right organizations regarding Obama Tranny-Care.
On Sunday, Bryan Fischer of RenewAmerica comments on my Sunday piece What A Rational Discussion About Healtcare Reform And "Sex Change Operations" Actually Looks Like with his piece Transgenderism and ObamaCare. With Peter LaBarbera's piece mentioning me, this makes the second conservative "Christian" to call me out by name with regards to healthcare reform and genital reconstruction surgery.
Seriously folk, how the heck did I personally become a face of this "sex change operation" distraction regarding healthcare reform?
Mr. Fischer begins his piece by saying...umm...well, you take a take a look at what he says...
Autumn Sandeen (who is biologically a male in every cell of his body despite adopting a female name) writes at Pam's House Blend that it's all hokum that sex reconstructive surgery could wind up being mandated by ObamaCare, all in an effort to contradict Matt Barber's assertion that it almost certainly will.
Hokum? Who the heck says "hokum" anymore? Jiminy Crickets, I'm being derided in the language of homespun colloquialisms!
Later in the piece, Mr. Fischer states:
Sandeen goes on unwittingly to defeat his argument in two ways by calculating the cost per American to have gender reconstructive surgery included in ObamaCare. Okay, if there's no chance it's going to be in there, why is he working so hard to convince us how cheap it will be? Sounds like he's drumming up an argument to me.He calculates that the cost, spread out over the entire population of the U.S., would only be about $1.73 per person per year. This is a self-defeating line of reasoning. If that's all it costs, why there should be plenty of compassionate, gay-friendly Americans who would happily pony up contributions to a charitable organization created to dispense vouchers to psychologically confused Americans who want to surgically mutilate themselves.
Best for last -- the conclusion:
If any tax dollars are to be spent on transgenderism at all, they should be spent on reparative therapy, helping these tortured individuals reconcile their psychological ogical identity with their biological identity. True compassion, after all, liberates. It does not enable.
I thought reparative therapy is supposed to change sexual orientation, and I've already been celibate since 1992. Exactly what type of therapy is recommended for changing my gender identity, and in light of Matthew 19:12's comment that one can change the shape of one's genitalia for the "sake of the kingdom of heaven"? What would be the reason Christ demand I go to reparative therapy, or for taxpayers to pay for that kind of therapy?
And, by the way, I already went to reparative therapy in the late 1970's, and it didn't cure me of having a female gender identity. My 20-years in the U.S. Navy (1980-2000) didn't cure me of having a female gender identity either. Sending me to reparative therapy at this point would be fraud, waste, and abuse related to taxpayer spending.
On a very personal level, I'm a disabled veteran who's healthcare is provided through the Department of Veteran Affairs due to service connected medical conditions. Seriously, dear blenders, how many of you believe that the healthcare reform bill that passes through Congress and is signed by President Obama is going to result in the Department of Veteran Affairs doctors performing genital reconstruction surgery on me? Does anyone actually believe that is going to happen?
I don't believe it for a minute.
Despite what the Liberty Council, Matt Barber, Peter LaBarbera, Roger Hedgecock and Bryan Fischer might say -- and may even actually believe, although I doubt that -- I personally cannot imagine a scenario where healthcare reform results in genital reconstruction surgery for anyone in the near future.
Apparently, conservative "Christians" believe this red herring -- this exercise in needling -- will derail healthcare reform. I guess combined with the arguments about how ObamaCare is going to fund abortions and kill old people, they think it'll work. I hope these conservative "Christians" -- those who to me appear to be doing grunt work for the Republican Party and the insurance industry -- are wrong about these distractive arguments derailing healthcare reform, but I see their arguments based on fear as gaining traction.
Too bad. The 47-million Americans who don't currently don't have healthcare insurance deserve better than this kind of issue misdirection. Those Americans who are losing their healthcare because of preexisting conditions deserve better than this. Hey, I can't help but believe we all deserve a better level of discourse on healthcare reform than these kinds of spurious arguments at the margins.
This all really would be funnier to me if healthcare reform weren't so serious an issue.
~~~~~
Further reading:
* Pastiche Foundation: Bryan Fischer disses Autumn Sandeen
* A.E.Brain: The Incidence of Transsexuality
* Women Born Transsexual: The Attack on Autumn Sandeen by Porno Pete LaBarbera
~~~~~
Related:
* What A Rational Discussion About Healthcare Reform And "Sex Change Operations" Actually Looks Like
* ObamaCare Is Apparently "Obama Tranny-Care," And I'm Apparently The Poster Child Of It
Please join the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Basic Rights Oregon (BRO) For a weekend of intimate events in Portland,featuring Kate Kendell, Esq., NCLR Executive Director and Jeana Frazzini, BRO Executive Director
The State of Our Unions: LGBT Legal & Policy Briefing Saturday, September 12, 2009 3:00 pm â€" 5:00 pm
Flying Cat Coffee Company 3041 SE Division Portland, Oregon
The legal landscape for LGBT people is ever-changing, and this year, that has proved to be especially true! With new victories and defeats occurring at a faster pace than ever, it’s hard to keep track of where our struggle for justice stands, and how and where our relati and where our relationships are protected. Join us for a presentation and discussion on the latest legal and policy issues affecting the LGBT community, including an update on moving forward with marriage equality in Oregon and other states and federal legislation and litigation. There is no cost to attend. No RSVP necessary.
A Social for Social Justice: Benefit Party with NCLR and BRO Sunday, September 13, 2009 3:00 pm â€" 5:00 pm
Nostrana Restaurant With award-winning Chef Cathy Whims 1401 SE Morrison Street Portland, Oregon So much has happened over this past year â€" we hope you can join us for a fun and intimate afternoon to catch up with NCLR and BRO and find out more about our current work and what lies ahead in the fight for our LGBT civil and human rights. Suggested Donation: $25, payable at the door. Please RSVP by September 4th to Dena Zaldúa-Hilkene at dzalduahilkene@nclrights.org with subject line “NCLR Portland Event†or call 415.365.1303. Reservations will be held at the door.
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