Virginians woke up on Wednesday morning to a Commonwealth in which we decidedly did not make the right kind of history in Tuesday's election. 

  That was left to our friends and allies in Arizona who did become the first voters in any state to reject a statewide marriage amendment by a vote of 49-51% -- a victory for all of us who care about justice and equality!  The first of many.

  But, though we didn't win, we did wake to a Virginia in which vote totals on the amendment also were decidedly NOT the 70-30% victory that proponents had predicted.  
 
I am sure many Virginians would be astounded to learn that our percentage of NO votes matched the 2004 result in Oregon and exceeded the percentage of NO votes in all of the other 27 states in which these amendments have been proposed except Arizona, South Dakota (52-48), Colorado (56-44) and Oregon. 
 
That's right!  Our 57-43% outcome was better than the outcome in 23 other states: Michigan and  Wisconsin (59-41), Ohio (62-38), Idaho (63-37), Utah (66-34), Montana (67-33), Nevada (67-33), Alaska (68-32), Hawaii (69-31), Kansas (70-30), Nebraska (70-30), Missouri (71-29), North Dakota (73-27), Arkansas (75-25), Kentucky (75-25), Georgia (76-24), Texas (76-24), Oklahoma (76-24), Louisiana (78-22), South Carolina (79-22), Tennessee (80-20), Alabama (81-19), Mississippi (86-14).

  It is clear that, while we did not win in Virginia, we made positive progress.  We started the campaign with a goal of turning out one million NO voters.  We projected that turnout would be 42-45% in an off year election, and that 895,000 to 1 million NO votes would be needed to win.  Current returns show that 997,702 Virginians voted NO!