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.

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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.

You’ve gotta love Ward Connerly’s flair for the interesting. He’s donated $500 to Barack O’Bama, “in recognition” of O’Bama’s statement that he doesn’t want to be judged on skin color. From the Orange County Register (which appears to be citing an Arizona paper):

Connerly is best known as the former regent of the University of California system who led initiatives in California, Washington and Michigan to forbid any consideration of race in determining admission to public colleges and universities. He was in Phoenix Thursday to speak about a new initiative campaign this year to pass constitutional amendments in five states to end all affirmation action programs related to education, government employment and public contracts.

But Connerly was asked about the role of race in the presidential campaign, with Obama being touted as a black candidate with the best chance ever to win the White House.

Connerly said he almost certainly won’t vote for Obama, as they are polar opposites on most policy issues. But Connerly said he has donated $500 to Obama’s campaign in recognition that Obama doesn’t want his race to factor at all into voters’ decisions.

“I think that’s how most Americans feel,” Connerly said. “The people of New Hampshire. The people of Iowa. People want to get beyond it, especially those 18- to 30-year-olds who are part of this new dynamic, energetic Obamamania.

MoCRI’s official response. I’m told this is the first time in history the Secretary of State has been overruled by a court on ballot language in Missouri. That’s how outrageous the language was.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
01/07/08

Contact: Tim Asher
Cell: (816) 868-3933

Court Certifies Amended MoCRI Ballot Language “MoCRI group praises court decision”

Grain Valley-(Today) In an unprecedented move, Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan revised and certified official ballot title language for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI), a proposed constitutional amendment scheduled for the November 2008 election. The previous ballot title language, drafted by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office, prompted a lawsuit from MoCRI Executive Director Tim Asher challenging that the language was insufficient, unfair, and argumentative. The amended summary statement provided by Judge Callahan goes a long way toward correcting those deficiencies.

“This new ballot summary is far superior to the original language rendered by the Secretary of State and approved by the Attorney General,” Asher said. “It is apparent that Carnahan and Nixon were primarily interested in keeping the citizens of Missouri from having a say on what is a very relevant issue for this state”.

American Civil Rights Institute President, Ward Connerly, is a primary supporter of the MoCRI and similar initiatives slated for the 2008 election in four other states. Regarding the Missouri ruling, Connerly stated, “This is a victory for all Missourians and serves to validate the political safeguards enacted by statute. The court ruled accordingly in what can only be described as an act of courage and decency”.

Today’s decision marks the culmination of months of legal wrangling. This is the first time in Missouri’s history that official ballot language certified by the Secretary of State has been amended by the courts. Another lawsuit, which called for a change to the fiscal note summary submitted by State Auditor Montee, had been consolidated with the Asher case. The court ruled to uphold the Auditor’s fiscal note summary as it was originally given.

The amended language reads:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to:

Ban state and local government affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment in public contracting, employment, or education based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin unless such programs are necessary to establish or maintain eligibility for federal funding or to comply with a court order?

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative Committee (MoCRI), a Missouri-based ballot initiative committee, is dedicated to providing the people of Missouri the opportunity to end discrimination and preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin by state or local governments.

###

Paid for by the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative Committee PO Box 545 Grain Valley, MO 64029 • http://www.missouricri.org/

The Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI) won its first battle over language in court, according to this Missourinet article.

Equality Talk has written here before about how the Missouri Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, contorted the language to actually make it seem like MoCRI did the opposite of what it does. 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.”

Although I don’t believe it went far enough in denoting that even the term “affirmative action” is nebulous, the judge at least caught the most ridiculous part of the game Carnahan was trying to play.

Ward Connerly writes a nice analysis here at Minding the Campus on the recent resignation of John Moores from the University of California Board of Regents.

John was the first one to call attention to the fact that UC was violating its responsibility to admit only the top 12.5 percent of graduating seniors. He found that UC was admitting as much as the top 16 percent in some years. He and I were convinced that UC Berkeley was admitting significantly lesser qualified “underrepresented minority” students over more academically qualified Asian and white students. He financed out of his own pocket a substantial study that documented this fact. Long before the New York Times, just a few months ago, suggested that UC was probably “breaking the law” with regard to the use of race preferences, John shared his concern that the pursuit of “diversity” had assumed a position of supremacy in relation to the pursuit of academic excellence at UC. When he asked questions about this matter, UC administrators stonewalled and his colleagues on the Board of Regents (excluding yours truly and a few others) voted to censure him. He could rarely obtain timely answers to the questions that he raised about UC operations.

Recently, the UC faculty announced that it was seriously looking at proposals to eliminate the SAT I and to give less emphasis to honors courses - all of which is driven by the compulsion to increase “diversity.” Rumors are also circulating that the UC Berkeley Chancellor is leaning on the UC Berkeley Alumni Association to establish a scholarship program for “minority” students only, because he fears that too many talented minority students are being attracted to Stanford, Harvard and other Ivy League institutions. What a pity!

Moores will be missed, and hopefully won’t be the last guardian of integrity at U-C.

The Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative (OkCRI) appears to have completed its signature drive and turned signatures in, according to this TV station news site clip from the Associate Press wires. It is perhaps one of the fairest descriptions of what OkCRI actually does:

The amendment would prohibit discriminating against or granting preferences to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, public education and public contracting by the state or any of its agencies, institutions or subdivisions.

It would not prohibit qualifications based on sex that are reasonably necessary to normal operations in public employment, education or contracting, or any action that would be necessary to obtain federal funding.

The Oklahoma Political News Service asks this astute question of the Attorney General. How long will be before Drew Edmondson tries to throw OkCRI leaders in jail? At Zarko Research, we’ve reported recently on how Paul Jacob was indicted, and re-indicted just days ago, by the Oklahoma AG for signature-gathering efforts dating back to 2005. When the petitioning process becomes this political, all weapons and tactics appear to be on the table.
http://www.okpns.com/2007/12/how-long-will-it-be-before-they-go-to.html

Cross-posted at my home, Power, Politics, & Money.

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.

It seems that the playbook argument for opponents - that preferences don’t really exist (but the contradiction that they are necessary to help certain groups) - has the same answer everywhere. Preferences are prolific everywhere.

The Arizona Republic attempts to make the case that Arizona is different in this op-ed. Although ET doesn’t believe that case is strong, every good campaign is introspective and self-examining for its own weaknesses.

First, the op-ed notes that Arizona is the only state - in 2006 - where voters have denied a same-sex marriage ban proposal.

That’s an interesting point - but its a radically different issue. First, Connerly himself has been sympathetic to issue of sexual preference equality, and while that coalition will always side with its traditional allies, preference bans enjoy widespread consensus because … well, it is the right thing to do. Moreover, the voters that voter for preference bans are part of a different spectrum than those that vote for same-sex marriage laws. Sure, there is a huge overlap given that both groups are considered “conservatives” - but the preference ban group has a core of support among libertarian conservatives (and non-conservative libertarians as well) as well as social conservatives.

Proof of this difference is found in the election results in Oakland County, Michigan for each of the two Proposal 2’s. Oakland County is considered to be among the nation’s bellweather swing counties. There is a false perception that Oakland County was a bastion of the 2004 same-sex marriage ban proposal - its vote totals were roughly 50-50 on that issue and it was the more conservative western parts of Michigan that made up the difference in creating a 60-40% win for the proposal. With MCRI in 2006 however, Oakland County was closer to the state average of 58 -42 in favor of the proposal. Arizona’s different results with its same-sex marriage ban proposal then only reflect that Arizona probably has less socially-conservative voters. Given that Arizona is also a swing state like Michigan, that means that those voters are likelier to be fiscal conservatives, and probably an even larger share of “libertarian-minded” voters, playing into the strength of AzCRI.

Here’s a clip from the op-ed:

But Arizona is different from those states in one key respect. And it’s not something that necessarily reflects well on this state: College admissions programs are the primary battleground of the racial-preference wars, and the fact is Arizona colleges are not terribly selective about who gets to attend.

At least not compared to the public universities that have been the focal points of the debate thus far.

That’s a rational point by the op-ed - that Arizona will have a higher number of “undecideds” should be the conclusion, not that it will decide differently. Once Arizonans are given an opportunity to judge whether they want such programs, you’d expect them to make the decision similarly. Still, a higher number of initial undecideds, in an area where the debate hasn’t yet reached a polarizing level, suggests that an opposition media campaign might have a better starting point in Arizona than elsewhere.

The end result? Minority students, according to Sander, are 2 1/2 times more likely than White students to not graduate. And nearly half of Black law-school students never become lawyers. This benefits whom, exactly? Some affirmative-action opponents argue that the preference system actually results in fewer Black and Hispanic lawyers hanging shingles (and, for that matter, working for prestigious law firms) because the “cascade effect” works against them.

Exactly how Sander’s cascade effect impacts academics in Arizona is difficult to say. Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law is ranked 51st in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report’s “Best Graduate Schools 2008.” I can attest to the fact that ASU is a fine college of law - my wife, I should note, is a graduate. But where affirmative-action programs are concerned, the battle lines are drawn more precisely around Boalt Hall at Berkeley and the University of Michigan law school and less so at O’Connor at ASU.

In Arizona, affirmative action is murky territory. ASU, like the University of Arizona, is expressly committed to increasing its minority populations but is not always clear about how it goes about doing so. Law school representatives contend they do not independently track the grades or the graduation rates of students by race. And they did not respond to an e-mail request for information about how law-school grads perform on the Bar exam.

If Connerly and company succeed in getting an affirmative-action ban on the ballot, those questions are going to come up more and more.

Yes, these questions are going to come up. But it sounds like Law Schools are the ones not answering, and that bodes well for “Connerly and company.”

The San Jose Mercury News reports that John Moores, the controversial regents at the University of California that opposed preferential types of affirmative action, has resigned. Here’s a clip:

Moores, a San Diego resident and chairman of the San Diego Padres baseball team, was appointed to the board by Gov. Gray Davis in 1999. His resignation is effective immediately, and no reason for his decision was immediately available.

Following the departure of former Regent Ward Connerly in 2005, Moores became the main voice of dissent on many issues. He often showed exasperation during debates and votes.

Perhaps exasperation was the reason. Ward Connerly has often humorously joked that his 12 years as Regent, which ended in 2006, was more like a prison sentence than anything.

Several stories have appeared on the early numbers of Proposal 2 impact in higher education admissions. The best is here, by Marisa Schulz of the Detroit News. It’s chock full of goodies (statistics and quotes) and worth a read. Here’s my favorite clip:

At Wayne State’s medical school, the number of African-American first year students was cut in half, one of the most dramatic drops among schools that had used affirmative action. Dr. Robert Frank, executive vice dean at the medical school, said it’s too early to tell whether Proposal 2 is the cause.

Diversity is still a very important factor at the medical school.

“There are all kinds of studies that show educating students in a diverse community just makes you a better doctor,” Frank said. The faculty now considers “distance traveled” in admissions, or what students had to overcome.

And another, showing both the tiny blip at U-M (caution - until a full-admissions cycle of data is in, which is next spring, we won’t have a good picture) and that the sky is not falling and the real problem on campuses has to do with something Proposal 2 never had any impact on:

The number of underrepresented minorities dropped slightly from 656 to 651. [ET ed: at U-M’s undergraduate school]

With or without Proposal 2, students of color at U-M still have to deal with challenges.

“The fact of the matter is our campus is still very segregated and a lot of it is self segregation,” said Sheldon Johnson, a senior and speaker of the Black Student Union.

This is not to say that graduate schools haven’t shown more significant changes, but that the pre-election drama wasn’t true.

The AP has also discussed the issue here, and I’ve discussed it here in a predictive way and here.