Brad Shannon:
The Politics Blog

Brad Shannon maintains this blog. He is political editor at The Olympian and can be reached at 360-753-1688 or bshannon@theolympian.com.

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Religious activists drop legal challenge to R-71 wording in domestic partner fight

• Published May 29, 2009

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That was quick.

Just three days after filing suit, evangelical activists are abandoning their bid to rewrite the ballot title for Referendum 71. The proposal asks voters whether they want to adopt or reject new rights passed by the Legislature for same-sex partners who sign up on the state's registry.

Judge Tom McPhee just signed an order dismissing the ballot challenge in Thurston County Superior Court, which McPhee had planned to hear in court on Tuesday.

Larry Stickney of the Washington Values Alliance requested the dismissal on his own motion to challenge the wording crafted by the Attorney General�s Office. Jay Geck, deputy solicitor general, said McPhee's judicial assistant just confirmed the dismissal.

The action frees Stickney's Protect Marriage Washington group to begin circulating petitions in a bid to put the Legislature�s latest action on domestic partnership rights to a vote of the people. He needs 120,577 valid voter signatures by July 25 to qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot.

A coalition of gay rights and others called Washington Families Standing Together is running a "decline to sign" counter-campaign to keep it off the ballot.

Here is my story from earlier this week on the language fight. It has links to the legal complaint filed by Stickney and information on the respective campaigns.

In a nutshell, Stickney wanted to draw an equivalency between domestic partnership rights and marriage, and to have it spelled out in the ballot summary and description. Activists found the AG�s ballot title was just fine, as in accurate.

Here is what the ballot title looks like on petitions, whenever they hit the street:

BALLOT TITLE Statement of Subject: The legislature passed Engrossed Second Substitute Senate Bill 5688 concerning rights and responsibilities of state-registered domestic partners [and voters have filed a sufficient referendum petition on this bill].

Concise Description: This bill would expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage.

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