This e-mail just arrived from the Washington Secretary of State's office:

R-74 qualified after the signature-verification check was completed early Tuesday afternoon and then certified, clearing its way onto the ballot. Since the 247,331 signatures turned in by the sponsors were far more than the minimum of 120,577 valid signatures from registered Washington voters needed to make the ballot, a 3 percent sample check was conducted. Of the 7,561 signatures that were sampled during the check, 6,877 were accepted and the rest were rejected because the signer is not registered to vote, the signature on the petition did not match the signature on the voter registration record, or the voter signed the petition more than once.

The National Organization for Marriage is going to portray getting R-74 on the ballot as evidence, in itself, that voters here oppose gay marriage. Then they'll spend millions, along with allies, to scare moderate, non-bigoted voters into fearing gay marriage, if history of NOM's behavior in other states serves as a guide. And they will do everything possible to persuade voters to reject R-74.

But for right now, support is on marriage equality's side. A poll late last month by Strategies 630 found that 54 percent of voters support same-sex marriage; they don't want to overturn the marriage law passed by the legislature in February.

Still, that's a narrow margin. The scare tactics of NOM cannot be underestimated. In Maine in 2009, marriage equality was ahead in the polls until almost the very end when the NOM Fear Machine went into overdrive. NOM has never, ever lost at the ballot.

R-74 is ours to lose, unless we play the fucking political game. And the fucking political game costs a fucking lot of fucking money.

So donate here to Washington United for Marriage.