Sore losers won't let go in California

Here's what I don't get about California and the recent Proposition 8 vote: Why all the commotion over yet another passage of yet another marriage amendment?

This was the 30th time a state has placed either a constitutional amendment proposal or its equivalent on its ballot, and the 30th time the amendment has passed.

Thirty straight wins is formidable. It's downright Globetrotter-esque. The New England Patriots didn't even go 30-0.

In twenty-nine of those statewide votes, nobody threw a tantrum.

Granted, early polls predicted California would be the first state to buck the trend, and it did come fairly close with just a 52 percent passage, which tied South Dakota for the narrowest margin of victory among the 30 votes.

But in the end, half a million more Californians voted for the amendment that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman than voted against it. The final tally was 5,387,939 to 4,883,460.

Statistics intrigue the old sports writer in me, and I find the numbers that make up the 30-time winning streak very intriguing.

The great marriage election debate, and the streak, began with Alaska and Hawaii in 1998, continued with Nebraska in 2000, then Nevada in 2002, followed by 13 more states in 2004 (Montana, Oregon, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan and Utah), another two in 2005 (Kansas and Texas), eight more in 2006 (Virginia, Colorado, Idaho, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee), and finally Florida, Arizona and California in 2008.

In all, 58,911,741 Americans over the past decade have cast votes on the issue.

The overall score is 37,662,846 to 21,248.894.

If it were a football game, you'd change the channel in the third quarter and watch something else.

Some states have passed their amendments by huge margins, led by Mississippi at 86 percent and South Carolina and Tennessee at 81 percent each. Six states came in below 60 percent — California and South Dakota at 52 percent, Arizona and Colorado at 56 percent each and Oregon and Virginia at 57 percent apiece. Most margins of victory have been in the 60s — Utah was at 66 percent, which made us pretty close to normal.

Overall, 64 percent of Americans who have voted on the matter are in favor of defining marriage as a one man-one woman exclusive.

That's more than 11 percentage points higher than the 52.7 percent mandate for Barack Obama.

And no one's protesting in the streets over that one.