Politician pushing Legislature to throw out anti-gay marriage petition
By Laura Kiritsy for Bay Windows - Published February 23, 2006
Northampton At-Large City Councilor James Dostal has tried harder than most to figure out how his name wound up on the petition to put a constitutional ban on gay marriage before voters in 2008, to no avail.
Northampton At-Large City Councilor James Dostal has tried harder than most to figure out how his name wound up on the petition to put a constitutional ban on gay marriage before voters in 2008, to no avail.
Dostal learned back in January that his name appeared on KnowThyNeighbor.org, a website that published the names and addresses of all of the petition signers. But he insists he never signed on the dotted line; in fact Dostal says he twice refused to sign the anti-gay-marriage initiative petition, which is sponsored by the group Vote On Marriage. Dostal filed an affidavit alleging fraud with KnowThyNeighbor, which is forwarding the complaints to state legislators, who are expected to vote on the initiative petition later this year. He recently enlisted the help of state Rep. Peter Kocot (D-Northampton) who reportedly spent four hours at the State House searching for the actual petition with Dostal's alleged signature. Kocot could not find the petition. And as recently as last week, Dostal was on the phone with Attorney General Tom Reilly's office to find out how he could have his name removed from the petition.
So why all the trouble, especially so long after the signatures were gathered and certified by the Secretary of State William Galvin? "The reason that I'm going to the lengths I am to get my name off of it is because I know I refused to sign it," Dostal explains.
Dostal says he's unsure how his name wound up on the marriage petition, though he notes that he did sign a petition that was being circulated at the same time last fall to allow the sale of wine in grocery stores. "That I know I did sign," says Dostal. "But this one I am absolutely positive that I did not knowingly sign," he says of the marriage petition. Many signers of the wine petition have come forward with similar tales of their names mysteriously winding up on the marriage petition.
A recent FOX News Undercover report revealed that some paid signature gatherers hired by VoteOnMarriage duped wine petition signers by telling them they needed to sign twice; their second signature was unknowingly added to the marriage petition. It's enough to make you wonder whether the $81,761 VoteOnMarriage shelled out to the California-based Arno Political Consultants according to campaign finance reports to collect petition signatures was worth all the months of bad publicity.
Despite his best efforts, Dostal doesn't sound very hopeful that he'll succeed in getting his name removed from the petition. After contacting the AG's office, he says, "I understand now that the only way that I can get it off is by contacting the people that gathered the signature and ask them to take my name off whoever it was that gathered the signatures. I haven't the slightest idea and so I would have to do web research and find out who gathered them and then write them a letter or if they had a phone number call them but it's gone that far."
Seems pretty unlikely that'll happen. So Dostal, who says the gay marriage issue was settled by the courts as far as he's concerned, has a suggestion about how to resolve the problem of his forged signature: "Actually the best resolution as far as I'm concerned is if the state legislature would throw it out," he says. "And believe me I will push for that."
