It appears opponents to domestic partnerships are hiring petition gatherers with long histories of alleged fraud to achieve their 120,557 goal to quality referendum 71 for the ballot. The Lewis County Chronicle reported on an incident in front of a Wal-Mart in which a paid signature gatherer intimidated voters. His name tag said he was Dan Ricca. The petition gatherer neither confirmed nor denied his identity, but for there to be two Dan Ricca’s with long histories of intimidating citizens to collect signatures is just too coincidental not to be true.

Here is a photo of the suspect:

Is this Dan Ricca?

In October 2006 a Daniel Alwin Ricca was charged in Orange County, California for falsifying voter registration cards.  He allegedly told people they were signing a petition to cure breast cancer and fight child molestation.  Instead the victims were flipped from their previous political party to Republican. He was allegedly paid $10.00 per flip. At the time the warrant was issued Daniel Alwin Rica was 33. He plead not guilty in November of 2007. A jury acquitted Ricca of the charges in March of 2009.

In 2002 Dan Ricca was accused of forging signatures  by former co-workers in Oregon. During a December 2001 Video Taped deposition of Saul Klein, he claimed he saw Ricca forge signatures and alleged Ricca even hired people to forge signatures for him.  The testimony was part of a civil lawsuit brought by OEA and AFT-Oregon against various companies owned or operated by Bill Sizemore. OEA and AFT-Oregon alleged fraud and racketeering  by the various businesses, including forgery of signatures on various initiative petitions. During the trial Leesa Beaudoin, a former employee of Oregon Taxpayer United who worked for a short time on initiative petitions testified that Dan Ricca’s petitions were associated with “round table”, a practice of several petition gatherers sitting around a table and forging signatures.  In fact during the hearing 376 petitions were presented that were identified as forgeries that were gathered by Dan Ricca. “The jury awarded damages to OEA/AFT-Oregon for a total of $842,000. Because the racketeering charges were proven, under statutes the damages were tripled to just over $2.52 million.”

People are innocent until proven guilty in this country, but there is certainly enough evidence  that Dan Ricca is a suspicious individual whose activities should be monitored extraordinarily closely.  If there is even a slight chance the Dan Ricca the Chronicle encountered is the same Dan Ricca accused of fraud and forgery, I demand the Secretary of State validate every single signature turned in on Saturday. Standard operating procedure is a 3% review of signatures turned in.  Considering what’s at stake, nothing less than a 100% review of the signatures will satisfy me. And if you are on the fence about signing the petition, you should ask yourself, “do I want to give my personal information to someone like Dan Ricca?”   If you agree please contact the Washington Secretary of State’s office to let them know your feelings:

Nick Handy, Director of Elections

Location:
520 Union Avenue SE
Olympia, WA

Mail:
PO BOX 40229
OLYMPIA WA 98504-0229

Telephone: Toll-Free
(800) 448-4881
(800) 422-8683 TDD/TTY
(360) 902-4180

The following was originally published on Jointheimpact.com

The Obama Flip-Flop campaign was a creative attempt to convince Obama to instruct the Justice Department to refuse to defend the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) lawsuit started by GLAD.  Presidents have the option to let lawsuits go through undefended when they believe they are unconstitutional.  Both Clinton and Bush exercised this option.  Unfortunately, the Justice Department released a 50  page brief today outlining the Obama administration’s defense of DOMA.  Check out the AMERICAblog for their translation of the motion. (A copy of the brief is at the end of this post.) In the mean time let me summarize; it is not good.  The Obama administration is attempting to diminish the two Supreme Court cases that most of our rights are based on, Loving vs Virginia and Lawrence vs Texas.

The LGBT community supported President Obama and his campaign with our money, our valuable time, and our votes.  We believed the President when he promised us he was going to repeal DOMA, end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Pass the Employment Non Discrimination Act, support Hate Crimes Legislation, and more.  We believed the President because he offered the country hope and our community needed hope more than any other community in America.  We needed a friend in the White House who was willing to lead us through the civil rights movement of the century.  We needed someone who was not going to stab us in the back.

Mr. President you flip-flopped.  We should have known.  You started your Presidency with one of the most anti-gay Pastors in the country giving your inaugural prayer, Rick Warren.  You further hurt us by remaining silent on proposition 8.  The one moment you mentioned our advances in Iowa and other states was in jest at the correspondence dinner. You asked the Supreme Court to ignore an appeal on Don’t Ask Don’t tell for “unit cohesion”.  You did all these things and yet your promises remained on Whitehouse.gov (FYI his promise to repeal DOMA is no longer there.)  Some of us still hoped, myself included, that you would do the right thing and not defend DOMA.

I no longer have hope for you President Obama.  I no longer believe you are on my side. Your adminstration is using the arguments of our worst enemies to uphold laws that destroy our families.  I should have known. I should not have been so enchanted by your beautiful speeches and colorful campaign posters. Mr. President you are no different than the rest.  You used our community to get to the White House and now you have pushed us aside. This time is different though, because we won’t take it anymore!

I was once on the fence about the October march on Washington.  It is clearer to me now more than ever we can not wait. We need to show up and stand up.  We need to destroy our worst enemy — apathy.  We need to mobilize our communities to fight locally and nationally. We need to demand that our leaders not only say they are going to protect our families, but they must prove it through action.  Flowery speeches will no longeer woo us.  Colorful posters are a red flag now.  If you want the support of the LGBT community, you will have to earn it.

A group of leaders met this spring in Dallas to discuss the future of the LGBT civil rights movement.  They developed a set of ideals that I think are a good start. They are called the Dallas Principles:

In order to achieve full civil rights now, we avow:

1.Full civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals must be enacted now.  Delay and excuses are no longer acceptable.

2.We will not leave any part of our community behind.

3.Separate is never equal.

4.Religious beliefs are not a basis upon which to affirm or deny civil rights.

5.The establishment and guardianship of full civil rights is a non-partisan issue.

6.Individual involvement and grassroots action are paramount to success and must be encouraged.

7.Success is measured by the civil rights we all achieve, not by words, access or money raised.

8.Those who seek our support are expected to commit to these principles.

We are in a fight for our lives. Maine needs our help to protect marriage from a voter initiative to overturn the recent gain there.  Washington needs our help to protect Domestic Partnerships from a group of fundamentalists. Gays and lesbians are still being fired from their jobs because of who they were born to be.  Children are being hurt as they are ripped from loving same-sex parent’s arms and returned to foster care systems. Our community continues to be violently attacked in hate motivated crimes. Obama reminded us today that we are the only ones we can depend on to fight for our rights. Apathy is no longer an option. Either stand up for yourself now or don’t be surprised when we are left with nothing.

Join the Impact will be launching several tools in the near future to help you fight for your rights. In the mean time volunteer your time locally, get ready to go to Washington DC, donate your money to LGBT causes, demand your representatives vote for your rights, talk to people about our issues, and most importantly do not give up.

When Obama became President, he asked us to hold his feet to the fire when he was letting us down. Mr. President, you let me down.  Join me by telling the president he let you down by twittering the president @barackobama with the tag #promise

It is no longer okay for our elected leaders to take advantage of us. If you want our support, you will have to earn it through action.  You better start now, because we are watching.

Against the warnings of the ACLU and Lambda Legal, two high powered lawyers filed a case in Federal Court against proposition 8. The case is based on the 14th Amendment.
Traditional gay rights groups are concerned the Supreme Court is not ready to hear this case. They are afraid they could rule against equality setting a long lasting precedence that could set the movement back decades.

Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, who represented opposing sides in the 2000 Bush v. Gore election challenge believe that waiting is no longer an option.

“There will be many people who will think this is not the time to go to federal,” Olson said Wednesday at a news conference in Los Angeles. “Both David and I have studied the court for more years than probably either one of us would like to admit. We think we know what we are doing.”
Boies agreed: “Reasonable minds can differ, but when you have people being denied civil rights today, I think it is impossible as lawyers and as an American to say ‘No, you have to wait, now is not the right time.’ I think if we had done that in prior civil rights battles, we would not be where we are.”

From the AP:

NEW YORK (AP) — Miss California USA can retain her crown even though she failed to reveal she had posed in her underwear as a teenager, pageant owner Donald Trump said Tuesday.

Carrie Prejean appeared by Trump’s side as he made the announcement at New York’s Trump Tower.

Trump also defended the answer that Prejean gave at last month’s Miss USA pageant when she was asked her view of marriage by judge Perez Hilton, a celebrity blogger. She said she believes marriage is between a man and a woman.

“It’s the same answer the president of the United States gave; it’s the same answer many people gave,” Trump said. “She gave an honorable answer; she gave an answer from her heart.”

It is the same answer the President Obama gave. Trump has summed up this issue very well. Why did our media so boisterously attack Prejean, and yet Obama’s lack of actual support for the LGBT community is going largely unchecked?  Sure bloggers and a few columnists have pointed out the President has done little to nothing for the LGBT community during the first hundred days, but when it comes to the issue of marriage even the gay rights groups seem to give the President a pass. We need to press the President to recognize our full equality in name and law.  We need to pressure Obama to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and we need to do it now.  Let’s stop focusing on Prejeen and start focusing on people who matter — who have real power.

Oh and about the nudy pictures, who cares? The LGBT community is the last community that should judge someone when they choose to express their sexuality.  Let’s take the higher ground here. On CNN.com, Trump aptly said, “Some were very beautiful,” Trump said. “Some were risque, but again, we’re in the 21st century.” I could not agree more.