Last night President Obama addressed the nation about an issue that is important to all Americans. Regardless of any other defining trait or political agenda, our mutual humanity unites us under one common umbrella; we will all at one point in our lives require medical attention. Anyone who has experienced a serious or debilitating medical condition understands that our current system is overwhelmingly flawed.
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There is a schism in California between Equality California and the popular will of the people which is supported by the Courage Campaign. Equality California put out a big press release yesterday claiming the challenge to proposition 8 would not be until 2012. They claimed it would take that long to persuade 3% of California voters that equality is a good thing. Prop 8 only passed by a 2.5% margin in 2008. They also do not think they can raise enough money to make a go of it in 2010. Equality California was responsible for the highly criticized campaign that lost in 2008. The Secretary of State continues to verify signatures during the referendum 71 qualification process. There is a lot of chatter on blogs and newspapers about whether referendum 71 will qualify, and several people are beginning to jump to the false conclusion that because the data is showing an increasing number of invalid signatures that this fight is nearly over. At this early stage it is not only mathematically inaccurate to draw conclusions based on daily counts, it is politically dangerous. It is not the word “marriage” that bothers them, it is gay people that bother them. They would prefer our families to be completely isolated from society — completely separate. They do not want to share ANYTHING with us. In Wisconsin the fundamentalists immediately filed suit against the state, claiming domestic partnerships are “close enough to marriage” to violate the constitutional amendment The Secretary of State announced today that they have a raw count of 137, 689 signatures on the R-71 petition. 120,557 valid signatures are needed to qualify referendum 71 for the ballot. Historically 18% of signatures are invalid for various reasons. The cushion for R-71 is 14.2 %, so we are still in the too close to call range. Because the margin is so close, the Secretary of State’s office will conduct a line by line review of the petition and will compare every signature against the voting record. If a signature does not match the voting record it will be disqualified. If there are duplicate signatures the duplicates will be removed. |
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Copyright © 2010 The Mighty Pen and Joe Mirabella- All Rights Reserved |
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