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Posted on 04/20/2002 12:02:47 AM PDT by LarryLied
Boston politics have a long tradition of being messy, corrupt, and fodder for books and movies. But, perhaps not even the regime of Mayor Curley, the kingfish of Massachusetts politics from 1914 to 1950, saw anything like a case being heard in court this week.
A judge is being asked to decide if thousands of voters who signed a petition for a ballot question outlawing gay marriage actually meant to sign an initiative barring the slaughter of horses for human consumption.
Lawyers for Save Our Horses said the confusion is responsible for the group's petition falling 2,574 signatures short of the 57,100 needed to get the horse meat initiative on the Massachusetts ballot in November.
The group is suing the state to get the initiative on the ballot anyway, and gay rights advocates are closely watching the proceeding.
Lawyers for Save Our Horses said officials of Ballot Access Company, which collected signatures for both petitions, encouraged workers to trick people who wanted to sign the horse question into signing the marriage question. Workers were paid more per signature for the marriage question, the lawyers said.
Enough signatures were gathered on the marriage question to get it on the November ballot. The initiative, if passed, would not only ban gay marriage, it would also deny any benefit of marriage to gay and lesbian families.
"This was an organized, systematic fraud,'' said Lowell Finley, a Save Our Horses lawyer. ``This question comes down to the integrity of the ballot initiative process.''
If the group wins its suit, it could provide a legal challenge to the marriage initiative, brought a coalition of conservative Christian organizations.
A spokesperson for the Freedom to Marry Coalition of Massachusetts said if the court rules for the group that is suing over the horse meat, there is "a real possibility that we can defeat the measure in the legislature."
The New Butt Order (NBO) knows they will loose in the public arena, and they will stop at nothing to deny the people the means to decide this issue. We're getting a good glimpse of what modern-day tyranny looks like.
Failed 'Horse' Campaign is Desperate
In an act of desperation, a group called "Save Our Horses" asked a Boston judge yesterday to immediately force the Secretary of State to certify their failed ballot petition, claiming they failed to get the required number of voter signatures due to fraud.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Thomas E. Connolly said he would take the matter under advisement.
Judge Connolly did not appear impressed and pointed out that it was the horse people who hired the signature gatherers. "Assuming fraud took place," he said, "it would be by employees of the company. It is the fraud of the people you hired, not fraud by the Commonwealth."
Although they have been making these claims of fraud since last November and have even mailed 28,000 questionnaires to the over 100,000 signers of the marriage amendment to see if any of them were "tricked" into signing, they had affidavits yesterday only from the six plaintiffs in the lawsuit and only five additional replies from the 28,000-person mailing.
Bogoian said: "A young black man asked me to sign an initiative petition against horse slaughter. I said yes and signed what I thought was the horse slaughter petition. While I was walking away, the man asked if I want to sign a petition against same sex marriages."
But if she had already been tricked into signing the marriage petition, why did they ask her to sign it when she was walking away?
The same question needs to be asked of Leeman, who said: "A man in his 40's or 50's asked me to sign an initiative petition about horse slaughter. I said yes, and signed what I thought was the horse slaughter petition. The petition was on a clipboard the man was holding. I saw only one clipboard. After I signed, the man asked me to sign a petition about marriage. I told him no and walked away."
If the Legislature doesn't like the vote they'll SH**CAN it. They've done that to many initiative petitions.
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