The Fairness for
All Families Coalition is engaging in a “primary day
of action” Tuesday as the Florida primary
proceeds, with over 500 volunteers blanketing 178
precincts across the state to educate voters about the
constitutional marriage amendment drive being waged by the
conservative group Florida4Marriage. The Human Rights
Campaign and Florida Red and Blue, a nonpartisan
organization combating the amendment, also coordinated
more than 250 volunteers in 10 major cities, including
Orlando, Jacksonville, Oakland Park, Fort Lauderdale, Wilton
Manors, Tampa, Sarasota, Tallahassee, and St.
Petersburg. HRC has had three full-time staff members
working the state since early January, and it added
another 12 people from its D.C. headquarters for the
action Tuesday.
Getting the
“Marriage Protection Amendment” on the Florida
ballot requires 611,109 signatures from 13 different
congressional districts across the state.
Florida4Marriage originally claimed they had met that
requirement, but miscounts and signature duplications have
been uncovered over the past couple weeks, leaving the
drive anywhere from 22,000 to 27,000 signatures short
and one congressional district shy. The deadline for
final signatures is February 1.
Nadine Smith,
board member of Fairness for All Families and executive
director of Equality Florida, says a broad coalition of 200
organizations has united to combat the amendment,
including the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, Planned Parenthood, and the Service
Employees International Union.
Volunteers are
both educating voters about the amendment and waging a
“decline to sign” campaign to counter the
signature drive. “We wanted to make sure we had
volunteers in a variety of precincts from the most
supportive to the more conservative,” says Smith. HRC
and Florida Red and Blue have conducted training
sessions across Florida since January in order to
mobilize volunteers and teach them how to speak with
voters about the amendment.
Smith says the
volunteers have already encountered several situations
where poll workers attempted to keep them from talking to
people. By Florida law, people are allowed to engage
voters as long as they are 100 feet or more away from
the poll’s entrance. Lawyers were called to
clarify the parameters.
According to
Smith, volunteers have also witnessed some successes, even
in more conservative polling places. One volunteer spoke to
a man who said his church had circulated a petition
about the amendment. “He said,
‘Ordinarily, I would be with them on
this,’” Smith recounted, “‘but
I’ve witnessed too many people who have spent
too much time in hospice care seeing their savings
evaporate while trying to take care of a loved
one.’”
Florida already
has two laws that outlaw same-sex marriage and prohibit
the state from recognizing marriages performed in other
states. Regardless of how many signatures
Florida4Marriage submits this Friday, Smith expects a
legal battle will unfold over the coming months that
ultimately decides whether the amendment will appear on the
ballot in November. (Kerry Eleveld, The
Advocate)