The Protester's Follow-up........and other things..........

A few months ago, I posted a blog about how our governor had decided to change a state highway, after a friend who had donated to his campaign, at the taxpayer's expense (during a time when he was telling our state lawmakers that we had to cut back on everything else during this recession).   Since then, my husband and the other co-founders of a group to stop it, started gathering signatures to get approval to put an initiative on the November ballot (they had no problem getting the 1,000 signatures for that.......especially if you go to a Tea Party rally on Tax Day).    Then, came a 30 day waiting period while the signatures are verified, and the Attorney general approves the ballot initiative, and then the 10 day period for anyone to complain about it.  When all was said and done, and we were given the green light to collect the 83,000 signatures, we had one day to do it.   We were given the "okay" to collect, one day before the deadline to have them in.    So, Mr. P. (my husband) and the other organizers, really had to be creative with how they could collect so many in such a short time. 

So in the time leading up to "the day", they:
~bought a banner featuring the name of their group and web address, as well as the date of the signature drive.
~spent a few days, holding that banner on the overpass that crossed over the highway in question, waiving & yelling. 
~were interviewed on the morning radio program several times.

~because this was a statewide signature drive, and because they did have an online petition option (print it out, sign it and send it in), they rented post office boxes in 5 cities where those closest to them could mail them to us faster.
~also had volunteers (including me) gathering signatures in front of post offices all around town. 

After a full day of signature gathering, and making trips to the post office boxes, we only had 1,117 signatures.  So Mr. P and company, took those signatures to the Secretary of State's office (they couldn't accept them as there obviously weren't enough) and then to the Governor's office with a handwritten note, so that he could see, just how many  people were opposed to this idea. 

So, what do we do now?  Well, Mr. P, and his co-organizers are now running for office (two of them are running for State Representative and one is running for State Senator). 

It's interesting, in that we had no idea, when this started, that the road we were fighting for, would lead to this.