So the Illinois House may be voting on marriage equality today. The reason they are able to even have the vote today has its roots back in 2006, when myself and many volunteers kept a referendum to enshrine discrimination into the Illinois constitution off the ballot.
I diaried about this back almost exactly 7 years ago. Although the Fair Illinois website linked there no longer exists, here is a timeline:
THE BAD NEWS:
On Monday, May 8, 2006, the Protect Marriage Illinois turned in an estimated 345,199 signatures to put an advisory referendum on the November ballot to ban gay marriage in the Illinois Constitution - and to outlaw any kind of domestic partnership. Their leader called gay and lesbian families "an infection."
THE GOOD NEWS:
Fair Illinois, a group of concerned citizens coming together for fairness, believes that many of the signatures submitted are invalid under Illinois law. Fair Illinois is organizing to uphold Illinois election law, challenge invalid and false signatures and protect gay and lesbian families around the state.
We need to stop this mean spirited attack on our families. Each of the 345,199 signatures must be checked for validity and compliance with Illinois elections law. Experts tell us that our chances are good, IF we have your help, your time and your money.
Chicago Free Press Report at the time:
It's a daunting undertaking: determining the validity of 345,000 petition signatures submitted by the Christian right.
And it's an expensive undertaking: merely obtaining copies of the 65,000 pages of petitions cost $15,000, and other major expenses include legal fees and a truckload of computer equipment.
...
But organizers of Fair Illinois, the group formed to review the signatures, say their objective of keeping the referendum off the ballot is well within reach. As a rule, about 70 percent of the signatures filed on voter petitions are legitimate. The rest are invalid for various reasons--they are duplicates, for instance, or the signers aren't registered to vote or list incorrect addresses.
Protect Illinois, the group that filed the petitions, needs 283,111 signatures to qualify. If 70 percent of the signatures they filed are approved, that would leave them short of the mark, with 241,500 legitimate names.
So far, volunteers are finding a rate of accuracy that is far below 70 percent. "If 40 percent of these names are valid, I'd be surprised," said Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois. His organization joined forces with Lambda Legal and the ACLU to create Fair Illinois.
As part of the volunteer group at that time, I can agree that there were a lot of invalid signatures. Entire families signed in the same handwriting. Non registered voters signing petitions. Just a general hot mess.
A month later, it was thrown off the ballot.
Chicago Free Press at the time:
The Illinois State Board of Elections ruled last week that a referendum on an amendment to the Illinois Constitution to outlaw gay and lesbian marriage won't be on the November ballot because proponents didn't submit petitions containing enough valid signatures.
The board made the determination after conducting a random check of petitions submitted May 8 by Protect Marriage Illinois, an offshoot of the anti-gay Illinois Family Institute. The PMI petitions contained more than 347,000 signatures supporting the referendum, but SBE officials immediately rejected about 10,000 of them.
In late May, SBE staff conducted a random check to determine if enough of the remaining 337,000 signatures were from registered Illinois voters to meet the requirement that referendums be supported by at least 283,111 voters.
Late last week, the SBE notified both PMI and the Fair Illinois Committee that its random check found far too many irregularities and invalid signatures on PMI's petitions for the referendum to make it to the ballot.
PMI is expected to appeal that finding, but the board's decision is bolstered by petition challenges filed June 26 by Fair Illinois, a coalition formed by Equality Illinois, PFLAG, the Gay Liberation Network, the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and others to fight the referendum effort.
Fair Illinois volunteers scrutinized every signature submitted by PMI, and the coalition's leaders said they found tens of thousands of signatures that should be disqualified because they don't represent registered voters or are improper for other reasons.
As a result of the work of myself and thousands of other volunteers, it was kept off the ballot and the path to marriage equality was made much simpler, as the state constitution was never changed to enshrine bigotry.
I personally would like to thank all those who back then who had the forethought and energy to do the right thing. It made today's vote possible.