Gay Marriage Ban Will Be On the November Ballot
Secretary of State Debra Bowen certified that the measure to ban gay marriage in California will be on the November 4 ballot.
This comes as no surprise to either side of the debate. In order to qualify for the ballot, the measure needed 694,354 valid petition signatures, which is equal to 8 percent of the total votes cast for governor in the November 2006 general election, according to a release from the Secretary of State.
The initiative proponents submitted 1,120,801 signatures in an attempt to qualify the measure, and it qualified through the random sample signature check.
The ballot is expected to be one of the biggest and expensive campaigns in California’s history. Both sides forecast they could spend more than $10 million each to influence California voters.
A Field Poll released last week showed that for the first time in 30 years of polling on the gay marriage question, a majority of Californians now support same-sex marriage and a larger percentage of voters are unwilling to overturn the state Supreme Court decision.
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County elections officials have 30 working days to verify the validity of the signatures filed with their offices using a random sampling method. The state Elections Code requires elections officials to verify 500 signatures, or 3 percent of the number of signatures filed in their county, whichever is greater. Counties receiving fewer than 500 petition signatures are required to verify all the signatures filed in their offices.
A measure can qualify via random sampling, without further verification, if the sampling projects a number of valid signatures greater than 110 percent of the required number. This measure needed at least 763,790 projected valid signatures to qualify by random sampling, and it exceeded that threshold today with 764,063 projected valid signatures.
The Attorney General’s official title and summary of the initiative is as follows:
LIMIT ON MARRIAGE. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: The measure would have no fiscal effect on state or local governments. This is because there would
be no change to the manner in which marriages are currently recognized by the state.
Submitted by Editor on Mon, 06/02/2008 - 9:59pm.
