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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Homo Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha

Posted by Dominic Holden on Thu, May 21, 2009 at 4:52 PM

God must hate Referendum 71. Let’s put aside the legal, temporal, financial, and personnel challenges its sponsors face. Instead, let’s look at their new spatial challenge. According to state law, all petitions must be printed on one piece of paper and contain a “readable, full, true, and correct copy of the proposed measure printed on the reverse side of the petition.”

So petitions for Referendum 71, in this case, must include the entire domestic-partnership bill it attempts to repeal—which is 114 pages long. That’s right, they have to print a 114-page piece of legislation (.pdf) on one piece of paper.

It seems impossible. But David Ammons, a spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office, says referendum sponsors could print the petition on a very, very large piece of paper.

Large bodies of text have been printed on petitions before--but nothing like this. Initiative 1029, which concerned health-care workers, ran a petition last year that included the equivalent of 21 regular pages of copy. “They took a large piece of paper and folded it four times,” says Ammons, adding the text was in minute six-point type. “If the text got too small [on Referendum 71] … it would be subject to challenge,” he says. Referendum 71, however, contains more than five times the text as 1029.

The petition “is under design at the moment," Gary Randall, a board member of Protect Marriage Washington, writes on his blog. "Our printing costs will be unusually expensive.” He then asks people to donate.

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Comments (23) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

Oh that's priceless. Gave me a nice smile for the day.

Posted by Hyzenthlayk9

on May 21, 2009 at 4:58 PM

They didn't think this one through, did they?

Posted by Baconcat on May 21, 2009 at 4:59 PM

Is it in Braille as required by law for those with vision difficulties and is it in large type for those elderly persons who can't see tiny type?

Epic Fail.

Tell them to print it on sails that are big enough to sail their 18th century wooden ships off the edge of the world.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on May 21, 2009 at 5:14 PM

No, wait.

Is this how it will be if the gays get what they want? If we have gay domestic partnership, will my credit card tab be 25 pages long? Will I need a binder to hold the parking time sticker in my car window? Will a dollar bill have to be folded 100 times to fit in my wallet?

I wanted to support gaying things up but if that means what was once a few pages long becomes over 100 pages long, I don't know if we can afford it. And why do you people do this, anyway?

Posted by elenchos on May 21, 2009 at 5:19 PM

Gotta wonder if the authors of the domestic partnership bill anticipated this. If so, fucking brilliant!

Posted by seandr on May 21, 2009 at 5:20 PM

Pure genius!

Posted by seattle98104

on May 21, 2009 at 5:22 PM

"God is in the details"

Posted by Heather on May 21, 2009 at 5:31 PM

hilarious! What if they petition to use a Kindle instead? Would that require special authorization?

Posted by aff on May 21, 2009 at 5:38 PM

Maybe god hates trees?

Posted by Urgutha Forka on May 21, 2009 at 5:42 PM

Dammit. I hurt my back over the weekend. It hurts to laugh. Please . . . stop.

Posted by Crazy Cat Guy's Husband on May 21, 2009 at 5:43 PM

That shit's going to take forever to carve into the stone tablets.

Posted by Fnarf

on May 21, 2009 at 6:28 PM

So will Stickney be dressing up as Darth Vader?

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/black…

Posted by Baconcat on May 21, 2009 at 7:26 PM

What clowns. Gay bashers make it impossible not to make fun of them.

Posted by lizzie on May 21, 2009 at 8:39 PM

Is there an audio version for the blind? I want to hear that!

Posted by JonSM99 on May 21, 2009 at 11:28 PM

I've lived here for only 8 years. Are there any other cases of, specifically, referendums to legislature up for a state vote changing the course of the state in a drastic way? Obviously, there have been many initiatives of course.

Where I'm going with this is: couldn't Tim Eyman use the same tactic to add extraneous B.S. to his next initiative which would make a countering referendum similarly difficult? Or referendums only count against what's passed in Olympia, and doesn't apply to initiatives.

(I admit I'm not as literate on important Washington State minutae like this as I should.)

Posted by mackro

on May 22, 2009 at 8:43 AM

It could be like Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." He wrote that on one long continuous scroll. Of coarse they can only have 20 signatures on a page so that's a lot of papyrus!

Posted by Joe

on May 22, 2009 at 9:00 AM

@16: 20? I thought it was 30 for some reason.

Posted by Baconcat on May 22, 2009 at 9:10 AM

LOL. Day made!

Posted by You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me on May 22, 2009 at 9:59 AM

I am disappointed that this is found to be amusing by other Human Rights Campaign supporters. While I believe people trying to overturn the domestic-partnership bills are on the wrong side of history, I do not think it is right to be happy when we learn of absurd hurdles to the proper functioning of democracy. Their efforts I disagree with, but this also brings up a shortcoming of democracy in Washington State that should be addressed.

Posted by aaaaaa11111111 on May 22, 2009 at 11:13 AM

@11 for the win

Posted by Jason Eckelman on May 22, 2009 at 1:54 PM

@19: I think it's sweet that you tried so! hard! to feel Ways about Things, but I'd like you to tell us why you think there shouldn't be extraordinary hurdles at every step of the way for a group of people who want to remove hard-won rights from their fellow citizens.

Posted by DanB on May 23, 2009 at 11:16 AM

@21, here here. Well said.

Posted by Some other guy on May 30, 2009 at 3:35 PM

@19: exactly right. It's hilarious in this instance, but next time around it could very well be that we liberal urban dwellers are trying to overturn an ungodly rural-and-suburbs-sponsored bill (anti-transit, pro-war on drugs, whatever sparks your political nightmares). State law requires that referendum sponsors fit the entire bill being challenged on a single piece of paper; that creates a disproportionate challenge for people who challenge long (which is not necessarily to say important) legislation. What rationality is there in that? Sometimes very good legislation is short; sometimes very bad legislation is long. We shouldn't be too happy that in this case our interests are protected by the fortuity that this good bill is a long one. The law should allow both short and long legislation to be challenged with equal ease. (Or, to the extent that you think the Western states got it wrong with all this direct-democracy stuff, with equal impediments.)

Besides, as Dan Savage keeps saying: we are winning. We don't need onerous procedural hurdles to do our dirty work for us because we can beat this petition outright. How much better will the headlines be if the referendum-seekers can't get enough signatures and have no excuse for it other than the fact that they couldn't find enough bigots left in the whole state who would help them?

Posted by Solicitor Expliciter on May 30, 2009 at 5:03 PM