UPDATE: CA Anti-Trans Initiative Meets First Qualification Threshold

In a somewhat surprising result, the heterosexual supremacists who failed to prevent marriage equality in California and who are now targeting transgender youth, have passed the first hurdle in their attempt to place an anti-LGBT referendum on the November 2014 statewide ballot.

Although they submitted a surprisingly low number of signatures (619,244) it turns out that in a random sampling process of all 58 counties that it looks like they may have submitted at least 95% of the required total of 504,760 (i.e. 479,522). The Secretary of State says that their projection is that 482,582 signatures are valid, a rate of77.93%. While this is a pretty good validity rate, in order for the referendum to qualify for the ballot, they need to have a validity rate of 81.52% when the counties spend the next 30 days verifying all 619,244 signatures that were submitted.

Although it is bad news that the haters have made it to the full count stage, it is still more likely than not that the measure will NOT qualify for the ballot and the people of California will be spared a campaign where millions of dollars are spent promulgating lies and disgusting statements about members of the LGBT community.