Saturday, November 15, 2008
The Prop 8 battle, if anything, has gotten more pitched and strident since the election, and the fallout from the election continues to suck up most of the state’s political oxygen. (Continued)
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Excellent recent maps from leading newspapers help make sense of the Prop 8 vote in key regions of the state. (Continued)
Monday, November 10, 2008
A San Diego Union-Tribune article sums up the battle that is still going on almost a week after the election over Prop 11, the redistricting initiative that Arnold Schwarzenegger believes has the potential, as Dan Schnur, the director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics, puts it, to be the “centerpiece of [his] legacy as governor.”
There are still uncounted ballots in the way of a final declaration of victory, but Schwarzenegger and Prop 11 supporters haven’t waited for an end to the count to call the outcome favorable.
The article notes that opponents of Prop 11 (the measure’s most high-profile opponent was Oakland legislator and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, who is termed out of office this year) were outspent by a nearly 10-to-1 margin.
A Center for Governmental Studies report concludes that Prop 11 will improve transparency and public access and “will probably be superior to legislative redistricting” but that “it should not be considered a cure for all of the ills of the redistricting process.” However, an Institute of Governmental Studies report funded by the James Irvine Foundation last year concluded that nesting districts (the incorporation of two Assembly districts within the boundaries of one Senate district), one of the features that Prop 11 would implement, “could impede the creation of majority minority districts and lead to more city and county splits than non-nested districts do.”
A quote from an Associated Press article this evening sums up the strange goings-on in California this week, with a reference to the votes on Prop 8 and Prop 2:
Walking with a sign that read “You gave rights to chickens and took away rights from human beings,” 42-year-old Lisa Davis of Alameda said she planned on proposing marriage to her same-sex partner during the march.
Of course, the Yes on 8 side has argued — and continues to argue — that nothing about Prop 8 takes away rights that currently exist. As Ron Prentice, chair of Yes on 8, told The Guardian, “Proposition 8 has always been about restoring the traditional definition of marriage. It doesn’t discriminate or take rights away from anyone. Gay and lesbian domestic partnerships will continue to enjoy the same legal rights as married spouses.”
Of course, what he doesn’t say is whether the same groups that mounted the fight to ban same-sex marriages in California will now feel emboldened enough by their victory to mount a challenge to domestic partnership rights, which similar groups have already done, with success, in states like Ohio. After all, if you can successfully argue that legalizing same-sex marriage mandates teaching same-sex marriage to kindergartners, why couldn’t an argument be made that legalizing domestic partnership rights mandates teaching kindergartners that domestic partnerships are equivalent to marriage?
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Capitol Weekly reporter Malcolm Maclachlan notes that statewide polls “failed to accurately predict the outcome of a number of initiatives, including a Constitutional ban on gay marriage, a measure that would have required doctors to notify parents of minors seeking an abortion and some environmental and public safety measures.” (Continued)
Thursday, November 6, 2008
One ballot measure whose outcome is still uncertain is Prop 11, the redistricting initiative. The proposition is ahead by about 99,000 votes, according to an article in the Sacramento Bee, but absentee ballots as yet uncounted could alter that outcome. Governor Schwarzenegger, a major backer of the initiative, has called on the opponents of Prop 11 to concede defeat, but so far, they have refused to concede.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
A blog post by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Phil Bronstein excoriates Gavin Newsom over his role in opposing Prop 8, noting that rather than take a real political risk and stump against Prop 8 in areas of the state where his public stand would have made a difference, Newsom confined his public appearances in the last week before the election to the Castro and Polk Street neighborhoods in San Francisco, and to UC Santa Cruz, which are, as Bronstein notes, not exactly “strongholds of anti-gay sentiment.” (Continued)
Thursday, November 6, 2008
An article in the San Francisco Chronicle underscores a point made earlier in this blog, which is that supporters of same-sex marriage bans have an almost indelible success rate in getting bans on the ballot and getting them voted into law.
That record is now 30-1 with the success of the three state same-sex marriage bans on this year’s ballot. Opponents of Prop 8 point to the fact that the ballot measure garnered about 9% less support than Prop 22 did in 2000, but that is very small consolation.
The only same-sex marriage ban vote that didn’t go the way of ban supporters was in Arizona in 2006. However, that 2006 vote was overturned on Tuesday with the success of Proposition 102.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
As of this post, according to the official numbers from the Secretary of State (with all precincts fully or partially reporting), the votes on the ballot measures shook out as follows:
Prop 1A
yes 52.2%
no 47.8%
Prop 2
yes 63.2%
no 36.8%
Prop 3
yes 54.9%
no 45.1%
Prop 4
no 52%
yes 48%
Prop 5
no 60%
yes 40%
Prop 6
no 69.3%
yes 30.7%
Prop 7
no 64.9%
yes 35.1%
Prop 8
yes 52.5%
no 47.5%
Prop 9
yes 53.5%
no 46.5%
Prop 10
no 59.8%
yes 40.2%
Prop 11
yes 59.6%
no 49.4%
Prop 12
yes 63.5%
no 36.5%
Filed in Ballot measures, Election returns, Prop 10, Prop 11, Prop 12, Prop 1A, Prop 2, Prop 3, Prop 4, Prop 5, Prop 6, Prop 7, Prop 8, Prop 9
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Wednesday, November 5, 2008
According to the Associated Press, the following dynamics were in play in the Prop 8 vote:
- Seven out of ten African-Americans supported the measure.
- More than half of Hispanics supported the measure.
- Whites were evenly split.
- Two-thirds of voters who described themselves as Christian supported the measure.
- Unmarried voters opposed the measure by a wide margin.
It seems difficult to ignore the conclusion that while Barack Obama’s election victory brought a lot of voters to the polls who normally do not participate in the electoral process, that increased participation was probably a double-edged sword for those who opposed Prop 8.
