Guest Blogged by Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us
California’s Proposition 8 — a Constitutional amendment to ban the right to same-sex marriage in the state — currently has more “yes” (in favor of discrimination) votes than “no” votes tallied, 52.2% to 47.8%, according to the CA Sec. of State’s website. This represents a difference of 434,830 votes. But according to the No on 8 campaign, three to four million provisional and vote-by-mail ballots remain uncounted…
There may also be ballots uncounted due to machine breakdowns, misplaced computer memory cards (oh, that wouldn’t happen, would it?) and the like.
According to Sec. of State Debra Bowen’s office, the number of uncounted ballots may be available as early as tomorrow. Counting them will take significantly longer, as each provisional ballot must be individually qualified.
Fortunately, the No on 8 campaign gets it. This statement adorns their homepage:
Statement by No on Prop 8 Campaign on Election Status
Roughly 400,000 votes separate yes from no on Prop 8 ““ out of 10 million votes tallied.
Based on turnout estimates reported yesterday, we expect that there are more than 3 million and possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots yet to be counted.
Given that fundamental rights are at stake, we must wait to hear from the Secretary of State tomorrow how many votes are yet to be counted as well as where they are from.
It is clearly a very close election and we monitored the results all evening and this morning.
As of this point, the election is too close to call.
Because Prop 8 involves the sensitive matter of individual rights, we believe it is important to wait until we receive further information about the outcome.
Geoff Kors
Executive Committee
NO on Prop 8
Kate Kendell
Executive Committee
NO on Prop 8
Yet according to the Sacramento Bee, “Frank Schubert, manager of the Yes on 8 campaign, declared victory shortly after midnight — but opponents called that declaration ‘presumptuous’.” We agree.
Proposition 8, if it passes, would eliminate the right to same sex marriage through an amendment to California’s Constitution.
Uncounted ballots aren’t the only issue here. According to OurVoteLive, the website associated with the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline for election problems, over 1,800 problems have been logged in California so far. What percentage of people who have problems report them? Likely it’s a low number. Many of the irregularities in yesterday’s election will take some time to surface. And we’ll be watching and helping bring them to the surface and to your attention.
Here’s a sample from the OurVoteLive online database for California:
Voter Intimidation Problems:
#31091: Caller reports that San Diego Minute Men have announced that they intend to be “monitoring” Latino voters in area polling places.Voting Equipment Problems:
#61864: Voting machine is shredding ballots in Fresno …#63263: Scanner for F-K ballots rejecting all ballots as invalid. Alternate electronic voting machine not operational …
#60678: Voter was told all machines were down and that he could not vote. They did not know how long would take, and voter had to return to work. The polling place took back his ballot and ripped it up. Voter still wants to vote.
Polling Place Problems:
#92413: Cops pulling over multiple people as they approach the polling place. Polling place is the National Guard Recruiting Center … (Note: This probably should have been logged also as a voter intimidation problem.)#92971: TOP OF BALLOT COUNTER WAS NOT ON CORRECTLY (IT WAS ON BACKWARDS) until 10am, 200 ballots fell out crumpled, they put them into the box- AND BALLOTS WERE CRUMPLED AND THEY SHOVED THEM BACK INTO THE BOX, NOT SURE THEY ARE COUNTED…(emphasis in original)
#94051: 2 separate ballots were given, one for presidential and one for propositions. The presidential ballot was run through the machine, but the other machine was broken …
So, where are we? Thousands of ballots yet uncounted. Nearly two thousand reports, many of which could call counts into question. And that doesn’t even touch the myriad dirty tricks that kept people from voting: tricks that made the lines too long for voters to wait. That made polling places too far away for voters to reach. That swindled voters out of their votes via phone calls reporting that Obama had won in a landslide and west coast voters need not vote. And that’s just a sample of the things we know about so far.
It’s hard to wait to find out whether our Constitution is being used as a weapon against us. But wait we must. As we say so often here at The BRAD BLOG, it’s more important to get results accurately than to get them quickly.
While you’re waiting, though, there’s something important you can do in any state. Get a team of volunteers together and observe the process of provisional ballot qualification at your county elections office. Watch to make sure that decisions are made equitably and according to law about which ballots will and will not be counted. Tips about how to do this are available at NoMoreStolenElections.org, authored by this blogger.
If our right to the pursuit of happiness can be removed so easily, what protects our right to life and liberty from encroachment? Nazi Germany used referendums to justify hate.
The Associated Press says:
“It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country’s precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.”
Another paragraph in the AP story:
“Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate at American University and dean of turnout experts, said his early numbers show 2008 to be about equal to or better than 1964, but not higher than 1960. He said it looks like total votes, once absentees are tallied (which could take a day or so), will be ‘somewhere between 134 and 135 million.’ ”
The New York Times currently shows only 120 million votes between Obama and McCain. In other words, 11%-12% of the vote is still uncounted?! Why in hell has ANYONE conceded or declared victory? What gives? There is no media coverage about the discepancy anywhere that I can see.
It is insane that there would even be an election to legalize bigotry and discrimination against people due to their sexual orientation. That is backwards medieval thinking. What kind of people get so fixated on other people’s private business? What madness! It makes as much sense as holding an election to see whether vegans should be granted the same rights as meat eaters.
Late night tallies? Too close to call? Millions of absentee ballots for Prop 8 not counted until today? Tons of money behind the initiative (subsidized by the religious right mega-churches?)–and a premature declaration of victory from the (minority) of bigots who support it?
I don’t buy it.
Someone has manipulated this outcome…
Even if Prop 8 has a majority of the vote, it will not become law without clearing some legal hurdles.
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/...groups-su.html
http://pageoneq.com/news/2008/p...it_110508.html
http://www.nclrights.org/site/D...pdf?docID=4321
My coworkers wife is a district attorney. Her take on it is that it will end up at the US Supreme Court and be ruled unconstitutional.
Adam #3
That is backwards medieval thinking.
The ads the pro 8 people were running the last week cried about how gay marriage violated their religious rights.
Huh?
I thought our Constitution guaranteed freedom FROM religion!
Lawsuits are already being served to throw out this proposition based on its unconstitutionality.
http://pageoneq.com/news/2008/p...it_110508.html
The battle against intolerance continues!
Here in sunny, backward, medieval Florida we had Amendment 2, to protect the sanctity of marriage against gay people who want to get married. Sadly, it passed.
I apologize to our gay brothers & sisters for there being STILL SO MANY?! bigoted souls who are so afraid of them. Although, Jeannie (#4), I suspect the situation here is similar.
A woman I spoke to while in line to vote said she and her friends had been confused as to how to vote on some of the Propositions. I, to be helpful, told her No on 8 was a good vote. “But, I want to vote for gay marriage” she said. I wonder if having to vote no to say yes to gay marriage cost us any votes?
@ Joan
I voted NO on Amendment 2. I did not expect it to pass (I have lived in FL less than a year). I guess we have more intolerant religious wingnuts down here than I thought.
We not only have to repeal Amendment 2, we also have to repeal the law that makes same sex marriges illegal. Amendment 2 also endangers heterosexual domestic partnerships, which are very common in FL’s senior population (Spouse died, don’t want to get married again, but want hospital visitation and decision rights).
I hope that someone with deep pockets will challenge these medieval, discriminatory and totally unnecessary bits of law.
I also wonder if the confusion about what voting YES or NO meant has anything to do with the outcome. In FL, I think that I may actually be surrounded by that many intolerant, religious wingnuts.
Ah~! Good to read the above info re: legal hurdles for this unconscionable initiative. Thanks, BlueBear/ Dolphyn.
Joan (#9) Sillygit (#11)~ Yes, I was following the returns for that measure very closely, and sadly, the results on the website had the NO’s being consistently trounced all night long,(I was almost HOPING to see something suspicious.)
Although I have many questions about some of Florida’s down-ticket races, it’s very likely that Amen 2 legitimately passed. Especially disgusting, as the unconstitutional amendment is a preemptive measure in response to a law that even doesn’t exist, yet.
If you’re gay in Florida, move now.
But in notoriously progressive CA? The state the Repubs are always touting through sneers as the “hive” of the liberal elite? It just doesn’t smell right.
Bluebear (#7)–Exactly. Well put.
I saw a strange thing in Los Angeles on Monday, Skywriting over the Hollywood Hills, spelling out in fluffy cloud streams”…MARRIAGE: VOTE YES ON PROP 8″ (Whatever came before “marriage” had been mercifully obscured by a cloud–an act of some kind of loving God? L.A. doesn’t have clouds.)
I counted five planes. Anyone know costs by the hour to hire 5 skywriting planes? That is some well-funded outfit of crazies…
so gays are the new “blacks before civil rights movmnt.” thats great it gives the white “christians” of the good ole usa someone else to try and control and discriminate against I am a straight white woman in redneckville and believe ANYONE who so chooses to marry should be able to marry whomever they want and I am sick of these christians and their ideas of whats right and wrong being shoved onto the rest of us. I dont have money to donATE FOR THIS CAUSE BUT I WOULD BE GLAD TO HELP GAY’S HAVE THE RIGHT TO MARRY WHOMEVER THEY WANT..HOW CAN I HELP??
Soo, what do you know about Arizona’s Proposition, 102 I think? Election night or maybe it was the next morning it was declared a victory at 54% (though I find it so shocking that people in this country really don’t believe in the US constitution’s separation of church and state, including people I personally know.) How many votes is that actually?
I ask because when I worked the polls in my very democratic precinct on Election Day, 1/4th to 1/3rd the number of people who voted a regular ballot voted a provisional ballot and there were 2 conditional ballots, not to mention all the early ballots dropped in the last minute. I should add that I feel very confident about the Pima County process for voting, even though we use Diebold tabulation machines. These machines are checked about 10-15 times before being put in the polling place with numbered seals on them. After the election, a number of polling places — I don’t know what that number is but I am hoping it is 1/3 — are randomly selected by the Democratic and Republican representative along with the head of elections. All selected then have their ballots hand counted (and with a 2-sided, 20 inch ballot, that will be quite a chore) and compared to the tabulation machines. To me, this seems to ensure that we know the machines are working correctly. Do you have other info on this?
Anyway, back to my original question: do you know (or can you find out) how many ballots have yet to be counted as compared to the difference between no and yes on 102? Is there a chance that in the end, 102 will not pass? I sure hope so.
Ironically, this won’t stop gays from getting married. They’ll continue to get married the same old way… by hoodwinking some straight person to marry them. Do these people understand that that’s the alternative?
BMH:
I just took a quick look at some of the numbers in the .csv (spreadsheet) file you can download from the Arizona Secretary of State website. (The link is near the bottom of the page.) If I’m interpreting the figures there correctly, it looks like there may be as many as a million votes still uncounted, which is far, far greater than the yes minus the no votes counted so far on Prop. 102. My quick look is not at all a definitive analysis. That would require looking at both the numbers and the demographics of the uncounted votes much more closely. You can call a county elections office or the Secretary of State’s office for help understanding what the categories on the spreadsheet mean, should you need that help for any analysis you might take on.
The California State Supreme Court has already ruled that a similar attempt to ban gay marriage, prop 22, was unconstitutional…no amount of out-of-stage election fraud will overturn that declaration!
wait and see
As of today, I see the lead for Yes on 8 has increased to ~ 494,000 – but there are over 2.7 million votes still yet to be counted in CA (nearly 616,000 in LA county alone)!
So why on earth has No on Prop 8 already sent out their “it’s not over, but we lost” email??? I don’t understand why they wouldn’t wait until the official vote is actually IN.
I find it interesting ( ironic) that FL voted against gay marriage while having a suspect governor.