In the current legal and political environment, one should never rule a frivolous suit being successful, particularly regarding the civil rights initiatives lead by Ward Connerly. Lawsuits are even repeated exactly verbatim in the same state even after opponents lose, as was the case recently in Missouri challenging MoCRI's attempt to requalify for 2010.

But in Nebraska where voters approved the initiative in 2008, the game clock appears to be winding down with a positive result. NbCRI appears to have won on both late "signature ethics" challenges (the usual meta-"word game" the left plays with "affirmative action" and "deception") and the so-called "single subject rule." In fact, the judge's ruling on that issue is very important, as it represents a common-sense rebuff to the left on an old strategy they played somewhat successfully with the Florida Supreme Court in 2000, and it has bearing on several future states CRI's might appear in.

Below the fold I'm including the raw text of the decision as well as NbCRI's press release. Enjoy.

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Where Ward Connerly's civil rights initiatives have qualified (Nebraska, NCRI, and Colorado, CoCRI), he is facing the sharpest personal attacks yet to be aired on TV against him. The ads get nasty, with stretched claims about how he's made money (so what) working for his causes. Linked is the YouTube video by user "BigMoneyConnerly".

What's interesting is that the ads were put out by the so-called Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC), according to this The Daily Voice story. We recently discovered that the BISC Foundation (the 501c3 tax-deductible arm, as opposed to the 501c4 BISC which is non-tax-deductible) gave money directly to the failed Health Care for Michigan ballot drive.

The irony of BISC's attack on Connerly's funding is that one could equally criticize it for its funding sources. Funding simply has nothing to do with the issue Ward raises - is it right, or wrong, to give preference based on race or gender? In each case, only the voters of the state ultimately decide - if their government doesn't short-circuit the process before they can.

Ward Connerly and Valery Pech Orr have one less obstacle in Colorado now that the parallel "twin" amendment sponsored by opponents of the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI) has failed to qualify with enough signatures.

An initiative that would have preserved affirmative action programs in Colorado fell short of the required number of signatures to make November's crowded ballot, the secretary of state's office said Wednesday.

Initiative 82 was nearly 8,000 signatures short following a line-by- line verification of the petitions, according to Secretary of State Mike Coffman.

There are 18 statewide issues on the Nov. 4 ballot, in addition to local ballot questions and races, state legislative contests, and U.S. House, Senate and presidential races.

The technique was an interesting one - the twin amendment copied CCRI in almost every word except for a rider at the end allowing programs that are already allowed by federal law. The rider might effectively nullify CCRI, assuming the twin amendment received more overall votes than CCRI.

Oh, and 18 ballot proposals is ridiculous. Michiganders complain that Michigan's ballot procedure is "too easy" or one that it was one of the "easiest in the country," need only look to Colorado, which truly is among the easiest. Michigan never qualifies more than 5-6, and even in 2006 one of the five was placed on by the legislature. Our average is 2-3.

The Associated Press wire, here through AzironaCentral.com, reports that AzCRI has dropped its legal challenge to recover signatures. While we had recently received a press release from Jennifer Gratz suggesting AzCRI had very optimistic possibilities in bona-fide challenges to recover valid signatures, it appears that one of the county recorders made voter file access exceedingly difficult in the period of time allowed by Arizona law once the Secretary of State made her ruling a week and a half ago. The re-challenge period would have been 10 days, expiring this coming Wednesday, but AzCRI claimed that the recorders were allowing only access to two voter file computers because of an upcoming Tuesday primary which necessitated that the Recorders' have access to the remainder in the interim.

This brings to three the total of signature drives that fell just short of their mark, but both Colorado and Nebraska did successfully make the ballot. It takes patience to end preferences.

In a disheartening development, according to Arizona Republic, the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative (AzCRI) petitions were, after review by County Recorders (Clerks), rejected because a number of signatures were found to be invalid. AzCRI is the third of five to fail to obtain sufficient signatures, and rumors of paid "blockers" who intentionally signed false signatures on a large scale preceded today's development, suggesting that a new era in blocking and how signature-gathering operations teams will need to respond to it, has emerged. Three other petitions in Arizona apparently failed this year, no petitions in Oklahoma have succeeded since the Democrat Attorney General Drew Edmonson indicted a petition-operation management team for work they did 3 years ago, and others failed in Missouri, to name a few.

The Arizona Civil Rights Initiative initially submitted 334,735 signatures to the state. But following petition reviews by the Secretary of State's Office and the state's 15 county recorders, that number was whittled down to 194,961 valid signatures. That's short of the 230,047 required for a Constitutional amendment.

In positive news though, Nebraska appears to have been sufficient and qualified, according to NCRI's campaign manager Doug Tietz, on KPTM Fox 42's online site reprinting AP wire reports.

Last I looked, I couldn't tell what someone's thoughts were based on how they looked. And I know its a bad idea to try. But in the never-ending battle of the left to invent great stories of fraud and deception by one of the Civil Rights Initiative (this time Missouri), we have yet another admission by a lefty that its ok to pre-judge people on how they look. St. Louis Today reports:

"He looked like a progressive — he had tattoos, he had an earring, he may have had a mohawk," McKoy said of the petitioner. "He seemed like a left-wing hippie type guy. And he almost got me."

Apparently progressives can spot another progressive when they see them. I didn't know mohawk, tattoos, or earrings were definite signs of progressivism. I know a ton of libertarians, classical liberals, and others who might have such identifying things and are far from modern-day liberals.

What's fascinating about these fraud allegations is how they prove the point the CRIs are trying to make.

But get this - Lee Albright, owner of National Petition Management, a Michigan-firm that is the giant of the industry and being paid to simultaneously block MoCRI (they are strong-arming their circulators not work for their upstart competitor circulating MoCRI) and circulate a casino petition, got a taste of the fraud allegations. Here's the story, from the same paper:

Dave Maus, a retired salesman from Oakville, said a young woman approached him about two weeks ago with the casinos petition. He recalled her saying the measure would raise $105 million for schools.

It wasn't until he got home that he realized the initiative would also do away with wagering caps and limit the number of casinos in the state.

"I know we should always read a petition, and that's nobody's fault but my own," he said.

You have to love the honesty and responsibility the signer took though. But the point - that the left is just as capable of using deception - in this case outright bait and switch - is effectively made here.

Finally, the Columbia Tribune reports that evil "out-of-state" opponents of MoCRI have been imported from guess where? Michigan. Guess who? BAMN.

It’s tough going, though, with collectors reporting they averaged four to 10 signatures per hour. For some it’s even tougher. A Michigan group, By Any Means Necessary, dispatched members to Columbia to disrupt the efforts of people collecting signatures for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative, a proposed constitutional amendment that would end affirmative action in the state.

For the past two weeks, a cat-and-mouse game has played out as signature gatherers have tried to stay one step ahead of BAMN members, who have discouraged people from signing.

That's right - BAMN has no active connection to Missouri - but it seems they believe its OK now to do things in other states. Shoe on another foot? Of course, the Columbia Tribune didn't make that point quite the way I just did - but ...

Rarely does this site do pitches for advertisers, but Ward Connerly's special to us.  Yes, I worked for him in the past - but this site is an activist site in addition to providing original investigative news and opinion analysis. And Ward Connerly certainly has relevance to Michigan - even though the battle is currently joined in Missouri.  And National Review Online considers Ward's "call to action" news as well, over at the Corner.

At right, I've created a clickable banner ad at the right while the offer lasts.  Ward realizes that when he asks people to work they need at least some compensation - even while they are ideologically motivated. Even left-wing petitioners and blockers pay their people - and in Missouri, the blockers are getting heavily paid, or are permanently payrolled union and BAMN thugs.  The anti-equality forces are throwing all they can at Ward, and he needs committed individuals to go to Missouri to help him collect signatures.  Missouri is a "non-residency" state, so anyone can petition.  And Ward's PAYING TRAVEL and you can easily make a thousand or more a week.

Great opportunity for college students, under-employed, or anyone wanting a couple of weeks "working vacation" learning the politics of another state and what petitioning is all about.  I've create this auto-forwarding e-mail - send your name, phone, and other contact info and it will get to Ward's staff immediately, or call the number on the ad and mention you saw the ad here. 

Amanda Hamon of the Ann Arbor News picks up the irony with this priceless quote from BAMN member Kate Stenvig, who spoke out against Ward Connerly's appearance as a guest on a Federalist Society panel in Ann Arbor on Saturday.

"We are saying forcefully that he's not welcome in Michigan. We're asserting that every minority and woman student on campus deserves to be here and is equal to any white or male student,'' said U-M graduate student Kate Stenvig, a member of the U-M chapter of the pro-affirmative action group BAMN and the campus' Defend Affirmative Action Party.

If you apply the rules of English, you might think Stenvig was on the pro-equality (anti-preference) side, but ... I mean, if you are "asserting that every minority" deserves to be there, and that they are "equal", then I'd both agree, and point out that ending preferences would and should change nothing.

There's no question that we talk about the same word in quite different ways.

Cross-posted at EqualityTalk.com.

In an irony trumping most ironies in the defense of the race preference industry, the Oklahoma Secretary of State and liberal critics of the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative (OkCRI) are attacking poor, homeless people in an effort to derail the petition drive. According to this AP article relayed by AOL, the OkCRI petitioners submitted a razor thin margin of roughly 2200 more signature than the necessary 138,970 signatures to qualify for the Oklahoma ballot.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Many names and addresses found on an initiative petition to ban government-sponsored race and gender preferences, or affirmative action, in Oklahoma were duplicated, Secretary of State Susan Savage said.

Her office tallied 141,184 signatures on the petition, which needs at least 138,970 valid signatures of registered voters to get on an election ballot if it also can survive any legal challenges.

"The petition signature pages are replete with duplicate signatures and duplicate addresses," Savage wrote to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.

"Replete" and "many names". Hmm. While that margin of 2200 is razor thin, let's look at the numbers Savage thinks are "replete":

The irregularities were reported to the attorney general to obtain guidance to ensure consistent compliance with the law during the count, she said.

The signature count resulted in an "unprecedented situation" where numerous duplications of names and addresses were discovered well into the signature counting process, Savage said.

The petition had 92 signatures that listed 415 Archer, 415 W. Archer, 415 E. Archer or 415 Ocher in Tulsa as an address, Savage told the court. The signatures were counted unless there was a signature found that didn't comply with the law, she said.

Another 28 signatures listed 800 W. California, Oklahoma City, as an address, she said. Those signatures also were counted, she said.

Folks. That's a 120. Less than 10% of the margin. And less than one-one-thousanth of the total number of signatures. Savage is right. OkCRI's collection was unprecedented. Most petition drives in the past have had 10% or higher error rates. The best the SoS could do here is find only one-tenth of a percent. Anything short of perfection, and OkCRI is "replete" with fraud.

But let's look at those 120 "duplicate addresses". The Tulsa World relays the same AP story but has a comments section. Someone chimed in that one of those addresses was a homeless shelter. Well, it turns out both were (the Oklahoma City address is the City Rescue Mission, the Tulsa one a Day Center for Homeless) if you do a simple internet search.

That's the rub - certainly the Oklahoma Secretary of State could or should be able to figure that out. And since most Democrats advocate for no identification voting access laws, primarily to allow the homeless and minorities easier access to vote; its easy to appreciate the irony and contradiction here. When its a drive run by "conservatives" or disliked by the liberal-establishment, and when they have control over the organs of governmental power and enforcement (the situation in Oklahoma is that the Democratic Attorney General and appointed Supreme Court "referee" control the process - with the AG actually prosecuting petitioners from a 2005-2006 anti-tax petition drive for "fraud" based on allegations circulators were "out-of-state" non-residents), the rights of homeless voters to sign or circulate petitions don't matter. So here, you have a situation where the Democrats are simply abandoning their defense of open and unsecure voting in favor of the highest security. Hypocrisy doesn't come better than that.

But OkCRI's 2200 signature margin is light, and I'll make the editorial prediction that regardless of how good its verification system was (which appears to have been as tight as you can get), politics means it won't matter. The referee would reject it if one signature had a glitch. And while you might blame OkCRI for not submitting a mammoth cushion like MCRI did in 2005, keep in mind the environment. As noted above, the fascist Attorney General in Oklahoma - Drew Edmondson - is prosecuting Paul Jacob and two other organizers for criminal fraud based solely on the notion that they brought out-of-state petitioners into Oklahoma in 2006. In that chilling environment, its a miracle any signature was collected 2007.

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI) has won at least one battle over language in the Cole County Circuit Court, according to this Missourinet article.

We've opined here before about how the Missouri Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, perverted the language to make MoCRI seem like it was actually giving preferences to individuals. The judge agreed:

Judge Callahan writes, "It is this second bullet point the Court finds troubling because it suggests that the proposed amendment is first going to do away with one class of preferential treatment programs, i.e. affirmative action programs, and then replace the affirmative action programs with some other kind of preferential treatment programs." "The purpose and effect of the proposed amendment," writes Callahan, "Is to ban certain preferential programs unless a particular program is necessary to qualify for federal funding."

A victory for common-sense, although I don't believe it went far enough in denoting that even the term "affirmative action" is nebulous, even here in Michigan the MCRI didn't challenge that issue so long as the phrase preferences was included and used in a balanced way. The sad thing is that the left and "diversity" industry spinsters have so misused the term "affirmative action" that they have devalued its positive meanings. Having learned that they've destroyed their own word from the Michigan results, now they're going to try to push the language even farther.

Over at my sister site Equality Talk, I detail the story of yesterday's submission of signatures in Oklahoma for the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative (OkCRI). I'll let that site do the work, but wanted to alert my readers here to the important national story. Not only is Oklahoma abuzz with the story of being the first of the 5 states in 2008 turn in signatures, but it is abuzz with a long-running signature-gathering and petition-rights suppression story with the Attorney General seeking to crush Paul Jacob and others for a signature-drive in 2005 (documented in ZR's previous entry here), arguing that they should be jailed for 10 years for using what he defines as out-of-state circulators.

For those of you who follow my miscellaneous national and topical interests like signature-gathering, and Ward Connerly's SuperTuesday, you'll also know that I follow First Amendment questions of whatever type. The Paul Jacob story hits all three. Connerly is helping a group in Oklahoma collect signatures as I write. Signature-gathering difficulties there are driven largely by politics - and although the people of Oklahoma are quite rational, their Attorney General and special interests seem to have figured out that out and realize they must hamstring the people.

Enter Paul Jacob. Like him or hate him and his efforts, he helped a group in 2005 in Oklahoma collect signatures for a version of TABOR (taxpayer rights initiative). Taxpayer initiatives are serious challenges to government and special interests because when taxpayers can say no and turn the spigot off - special interests and the "governmental class" (the army of people working for the government get to vote, and self-lobby, too) get mad. Mad enough to put people who threaten them in jail.

So, when Democrat Attorney General Drew Edmonson told a grand jury to indict Jacob earlier this year, they jumped. Grand juries would indict cinder block if told to, and even under the best circumstances, a grand jury indictment is under a standard of evidence that there is simply enough evidence to warrant a trial - not that anyone is guilty. Regardless, the indictment was for "conspiracy" to "defraud the state", a stretch of that charge based on the underlying crime of ... coordinating signature-gatherers who did not intend to live in Oklahoma forever. That is, using "out-of-state" signature gatherers invalidates a signature in Oklahoma (nowhere in the Oklahoma code however, could I find a law criminalizing out-of-state gathering, merely the AG interpretation that residency means someone must intend to live in Oklahoma forever). From the non-crime of not knowing exactly where one might live in a few years, and two years following the Oklahoma state court's "referee" refusal to place TABOR on the 2006 ballot, the AG indicted 3 petition drive leaders (with no indictments for any criminal circulator below them, another hard piece of logic to follow). Now clearly this all contrived to make all signature-gathering of any type more difficult, and to plant the fear of criminal prosecution in the hearts of petition-drive leaders.

But the AG made a technical mistake in his grand jury indictment, and misused the multi-county nature of that body, so he had to drop the charges. Yesterday, he reissued the charges under his own office's direct power of prosecution, and is going full-steam ahead.

Whether you are liberal or conservative, or libertarian (I guess if you're authoritarian, you should support the AG), you should take note of this case. It's about control and power. It's about suppressing speech and petitioning. Sure, reasonable rules can invalidate bad or petitions created in error - and although there is probably no compelling interest in state residency requirements even if there were, this case is one of ambiguity in law being used as a blunt hammer to quash dissidents. Even if you are an opponent of Jacob's views, to remain silent when his speech and petition rights are subverted is to invite the same to happen to you when you disagree with the establishment.

In all, this is probably the most important First Amendment case, and clearly the most important petitioning case to arise from the year 2007. Follow it closely. Prevent it from happening in your state. Blog it if you can. Write a letter to the editor if its relevant. And be careful when you travel through Oklahoma.

For those of you following the SuperTuesday of Equality by Ward Connerly, you'll note many of the opponents in the new five states suggest that there is no preference anywhere in their state governments, and hence the CRI's are "unnecessary" (of course, that begs the question, why oppose them).

In Arizona, at least 30-some programs do exist, in the report by Clint Bolick.

Appropriately, the question has been raised whether the initiative is a solution in search of a problem. This paper documents more than three dozen such classifications in Arizona government programs at the state, local, and university levels. Given that governmental entities are rarely candid about whether and the extent to which they confer preferences on the basis of race, color, or sex, the fact that three dozen visible programs were easily discovered suggests that the programs identified in this paper may represent only the tip of the Arizona preference iceberg.

The following YouTube video from Oklahoma shows an amazing 10 minute scene where a petitioner is ceaselessly harangued by a "blocker". The petitioner, trying to collect signatures for the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative (OkCRI), remains calm and level-headed while two others from the signature-management team videotape the situation.

Having been through this personally, I can say it both stirs memories and is straight out of the playbook against MCRI.

DC Observer, which is a blogger's choice award nominee level blog with a tilt to the left, has used the "blood quantum" argument to attack Ward Connerly. DC Observer now claims the authority to declare "that it is not accurate to consider Ward Connerly as a black person." It's rare that the left uses the blood quantum argument to attack its conservative Republican enemies, but this isn't the first time Ward's multi-racial status (and he'll call himself that before he calls himself black, but that's not the point -- the argument that is "not black" should not be made and exposes a double-standard on the left). All reasonable persons on either side of this debate should criticize this argument - the blood quantum was used viciously historically to implement Jim Crow laws, and Ward certainly grew in conditions where he didn't "benefit" from any "whiteness" (and he visually couldn't "pass" for white). It's a bad argument that should be thrown into the ash bin of history.

Here's the entry:

Related Post Script

I do not believe it is accurate to consider Ward Connerly as a Black person. In an article, Connerly has described himself as 25% Black.

Connerly has stated he is one-quarter Black, three-eighths Irish, one-quarter French and one-eighth Choctaw.

The inference from his statement is that he is primarily White and Native American.

And my response:

Who the heck (I'd use a stronger term, but I'm being nice) are you to determine accuracy of what is or isn't a "black person". This post is insulting and you should apologize for it.

There used to be a "one-drop" blood test that offensively labeled anyone, with any drop of African lineage, "black," and subjected that person to Jim Crow (or, simpler, whether the person "looked" black -- Ward, visually, definitely couldn't "pass" for white).

Now, when its convenient for you to argue that someone that would have fit that test which most on the left (and the right and the middle and everywhere that reason is accepted) have condemned as an immoral and disgusting practice, you want to apply a similar purity test to your benefit.

Chetly Zarko,
OutsideLansing.com

PS - as a matter of disclosure, I worked with Ward on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. Nonetheless, that doesn't change the offensiveness of this post.