Ballot Initiative to Constitutionally Ban Gay Marriage is Likely for November Ballot

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Advocates for a California Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage put out a press release saying they have collected enough signatures to qualify the initiative for November:

"SACRAMENTO - ProtectMarriage.com, a coalition of pro-family organizations, churches and individuals, announced today successfully collecting signatures from over 1.1 million voters to put an initiative on the November ballot to protect marriage in California as only between a man and a woman... boxes of petitions are being delivered to election officials in all 58 counties, who will now validate the petitions and determine if the needed 694,354 valid signatures have been submitted. If so, the measure will appear on the November 2008 ballot."

As of May 05, at 3:26pm the Secretary of State's office had 351,095 "raw" signatures collected. This number of raw signatures is screened and tested by the Secretary of State's Office and they come up with the number of "valid" signatures. The common knowledge is that 1.1 million raw signatures collected will get the sufficient 694,354 valid signatures. Each day more and more raw signatures come trickeling in and are added to a working spreadsheet maintained by the Secretary of State. The  collection and verification process can be monitored on the Secretary of State's website at http://sos.ca.gov.
 
LGBT organizations statewide are preparing to mobilize a massive campaign against the initiative.

Chris Moore works in a California Assembly office. He previously was a press intern for Speaker Fabian Nunez.