Word: voting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Supporters were left early Wednesday morning looking for silver linings. Eight thousand volunteers manned the campaign to keep same-sex marriage, says Bonauto, and most of those people were not gay. "One way or another, after this vote, the people of Maine are not going to allow gay and lesbian people to remain strangers to the law," she says. "Gays and lesbians have met their non-gay neighbors, and they have introduced their families and their children." In Washington State, voters appeared to have ratified a law that was passed earlier this year giving its 6,000 registered domestic partners...
...Maine's vote, much like all of the states before it, including California's vote on Prop 8 a year ago, will do little to slow the fight over gay marriage. Not in Maine, where Tuesday's vote was only the equivalent of a veto and can be easily reversed by lawmakers when they next meet, and not in the rest of country, where the issue continues to roil courthouses and statehouses alike. "Ultimately, this is going to have to have a national resolution," says same-sex-marriage activist Mary Bonauto, one of the nation's top lawyers involved...
...That campaign looked to be winning for much of Tuesday evening. Looking at early vote totals, CNN legal-affairs analyst Jeffrey Toobin said if the trend held, the vote in Maine would have enormous implications in favor of gay marriage elsewhere. "That's a big cultural change," he said. "Every time voters have spoken - every time - they have rejected gay marriage. But this shows the country is changing...
...vote prompted an outpouring of cash and other resources from far beyond the borders of the Pine Tree State. From New Jersey, the National Organization for Marriage sent a $1.8 million check to help defeat gay marriage. Gay couples in California and others still heartbroken over the Prop 8 vote sent lots of smaller checks to help bring the 'Vote No on 1' coalition some $4 million. On Tuesday, Californians manned phone banks to help encourage the vote, which Maine's Secretary of State told reporters Tuesday was exceptionally large...
...reason is that while Cuban-American voters may still favor the trade embargo - though recent polls indicate support for that is fading fast, too, especially as more young Cuban Americans and recently arrived Cuban immigrants register to vote - they no longer see the travel ban as an inseparable component. In fact, they see lifting the ban as a way to throw a bigger ball into Havana's court, one that might oblige current Cuban President Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, to release more jailed dissidents or make other reform gestures...