R-71 legal update: Challengers file new lawsuit to block vote
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Washington Families Standing Together, the coalition supporting a newly adopted “everything but marriage” expansion of rights for state-registered domestic partners, has filed a fresh lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court to try to block a public vote this fall on the new law.
The organization and its chairwoman, Anne Levinson, challenged the validity of over 35,000 voter signatures accepted by the state Elections Division, and asked the court to direct the Secretary of State Sam Reed not to place Referendum 71 on the ballot.
On Wednesday, Secretary Reed certified the measure to the statewide ballot after a month-long signature check. Sponsors were found to have 122,007 valid signatures of Washington voters, a scant 1,430 signatures above the bare minimum.
The newest lawsuit raises the same issues that they had brought before King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector earlier in the week in an unsuccessful attempt to block the vote. Spector on Wednesday declined to stop the vote.
WFST took issue with election workers accepting over 35,000 signatures from petitions that did not bear the personal signature of the person who circulated the petition. The Elections Division has declined to reject such signatures, citing an attorney general's opinion that says the Legislature has not clearly made it a legal requirement that each petition be signed in order for the voter signatures to be considered.
As in the King County case, the challengers also objected to the Secretary's decision to accept signatures of people who registered to vote at the same time they signed the petition, rather than require that they already be on the voter rolls. Election officials accept valid signatures of people who are found on the voter rolls at the time of the check.
Judge Spector was sympathetic to the WFST arguments, but said she could not direct the Secretary to reject the questioned signatures. She noted that state law gives opponents a five-day window to file a case in Thurston County court, and that's what happened Thursday afternoon.
In their proposed order, they said "Signatures of indiivduals who were not registered at the time the petition was signed cannot be knowningly accepted by the Secretary," and said the 35,000-plus signatures without the circulator's personal signature cannot be accepted.
The Attorney General will represent the Secretary and the Elections Division. No hearing has been set, but Reed has requested a speedy process, noting that the Sept. 10 deadline for the state Voters' Pamphlet and for preparing ballots is fast approaching. Overseas and military ballots must go in the mail one month from today, and all other mail ballots must be mailed out by Oct. 16 and available at the elections counters by Oct. 14.
Unless the courts intervene, R-71 will ask voters to either approve or reject Senate Bill 5688, the new domestic-partnership law that is on hold until the referendum question is decided.
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Secretary of State
Steve Hobbs
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