Counting Petition Sins

The tainted petition drive to advance an anti-same-sex-marriage amendment toward a Massachusetts vote in 2008 certainly got the minimum signature count and more. MassEquality admits as much, but continues to work to remind voters how dirty the effort was.

It shouldn't be amusing, but it is to read that the Mass Family Institute is playing a victim card, another victim card. It is claiming that the robot calls that MassEquality has used to ask petition signers to contact them if their signature appears on the petition in error are intimidation.

May we have a "Say what?"

It is possible that 10% to 15% of the signatures are there by deceit or fraud. That is far short of the number that would disqualify the drive. However, according to an article in BayWindows, MassEquality campaign director Marc Solomon will use real people to illustrate the dirty-tricks aspect of the effort.

VoteOnMarriage.org had months to gather its 123,000-plus sigs, with paid gatherers. MassEquality had less than two weeks to find as many instances of fraud as it could. That was impossible, but Solomon does not think his group's efforts were wasted..

“Even if you identified the people you’d need to get them to agree to go before the ballot law commission. It’s unimaginable conceptually. I can’t even envision it,” he said. He had to tell those tricked into signing or who didn't sign at all but their names appeard that after January 6th, they can't even have their names removed.

According to BW, " MassEquality does not plan to be silent about the alleged fraud. Solomon said MassEquality plans to recruit voters who have been tricked to tell their stories to the public and the media." He added, "We will identify people who will tell their stories of seeing their name on the petition and being floored by it over the next week or two, and we’ll publicize it. What we want to show is our opponents are boasting that they’ve collected more signatures than anyone in the past… One of the ways they’ve been able to do it is by tricking people into signing their petition."

Both the methods and aim of the petition folk suck. Now, having victimized thousands of voters and trying to strip rights from Massachusetts citizens, they will have an ever harder time trying to be convincing with their alleged victimization.