Florida May Not Face Gay Marriage Amendment on Nov Ballot

In one of the strangest twists in a state that is no stranger to election twists, the Florida Secretary of State announced last week that there appeared to be problems with their tabulation of petitions to place constitutional amendments on the ballot. Foremost of this group is the attempt by Florida4Marriage.org to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to outlaw same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships, anything that "mimics" 'straight' marriage.

The deadline for petitions to be validated to make the November 2008 ballot is February 1. Earlier this month, they were reporting that they had filed over 618,000 petitions (more than the 611,000+ required) and had qualified in 15 of Florida 25 congressional districts (they must also qualify in half of the congressional districts.)

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The Division of Elections required each county supervisor of elections to re-tabluate their petition counts and submit them to Tallahassee for announcement today.

When the new numbers were posted, the 'protection of marriage' amendment only had 589,020 of the 611,009 needed and was only qualified in 12 of the 25 congressional districts (1 short.)

The biggest culprit was Miami-Dade County that had apparently double counted a significant number of petitions, resulting in 27,393 fewer petitions than originally reported. Alachua County (Gainesville - University of Florida) reported 2,182 less and Lee County (Ft Myers) reported 1,356 fewer. (See the Miami Herald story here).

But a new count of petition signatures ordered last week by the Department of State now shows that the Florida Marriage Protection Amendment is short by roughly 22,000 signatures.

So the scramble is on. While we have a primary on January 29 that would provide a ripe opportunity for petition gathering (the leader of Florida4Marriage announced today that he was switching his allegiance from Fred Thompson to Mike Huckabee), one has to wonder if there would be sufficient time to then get them to the Supervisor of Elections and validated to meet the 5pm deadline on Feb. 1 for them to be in Tallahassee.

Further, since Governor Crist announced that the Republican Party would no longer be funding this effort (they contributed over $300,000 during the Jeb Bush regime), their fundraising in 2007 has been almost non-existent.

It's way too early to pat ourselves on the back; there are certain to be court challenges and never count out the fundraising ability of groups like this.

But this is the best news we've had in Florida in quite a while in this struggle and if this plays out, it removes one of the Republicans weapons in the November election in Florida.