Sign the petition, I will

Art. 16. That sanguinary Laws ought to be avoided as far as it is consistent with the safety of the State; and no Law to inflict cruel and unusual pains and penalties ought to be made in any case, or at any time, hereafter. – Maryland Constitution and Declaration of Rights

And there’s a law out there that is quite sanguinary. It’s called the early voting law, or as I see it, the “invitation to voter fraud” law. The Maryland GOP is planning a petition drive to allow a true democracy to judge the bill by its merits, that being the people of the state of Maryland.

On the surface the bill seems to be in the public interest, as the proponents state that low turnout on Election Day is caused by people who may work two jobs or odd shifts (those mythical “working families” again) not having an opportunity to get out and vote – thus, we need several extra days of voting to accomplish as large a turnout as possible. However, the party out in front of this measure just so happens to be the one that is supposedly helped by a large turnout. I have no problem with turnout – personally I think everyone eligible should get out and use the right our forefathers died for – but the abuse of that right is the crux of my problem, and having multiple-day elections seems to me a situation ripe for exploitation.

I have worked the polls as a campaigner for many years on Election Day. I know that the voting turnout is pretty slow the first hour (Ohio voting runs from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.), picks up between 7:30 and 9 a.m., has a small peak at lunchtime, and is heaviest from 5 to 7 p.m. The poll workers almost always take their lunch breaks between 1 and 3, when few voters show up. The polling place I generally worked as a campaigner was also my personal voting place, so a lot of years I was voter #1 or #2 since I voted first thing then passed out literature or held up the sign for the rest of the day. It was less than a mile from my house, so I could take 5-10 minutes for a potty break if need be. The point is, there’s 13 available hours for a person to get to their polling place, which most times is within a short distance of their home. If a person can’t make a little bit of time in that period (or get an absentee ballot, which is almost ludicrously easy to get now) to exercise their right, is having those extra days really going to matter? People who simply don’t want to vote could have all year and they won’t do it. But someone with larceny in their heart and a valid voter registration card could now make the grand tour of Maryland polling places, casting provisional ballots all along the way in the hopes that some of them sneak through into the total count.

Throughout American history there have been tales of electoral shenanigans by the party in power, from the corrupt Tammany Hall Democrats in late-1800’s New York City to the Chicago Daley machine who voted from beyond the grave. A party accustomed to power used whatever methods necessary to maintain its stranglehold on government. In this year’s General Assembly session the state Democrats unsuccessfully tried to add felons to the 2006 voting rolls to pump up their likely turnout; by selecting early polling places that were mainly in Democrat strongholds, they again attempt to jigger the results their way. (Even though, if you believe the polls, they don’t have a lot to worry about.)

To get the petition on the November ballot, the proponents of overturning early voting need to get just over 50,000 signatures by June 30, with 1/3 of those collected by May 31st. This is according to the Maryland Board of Elections. However, Democrats are quick to point out that an opinion last year by Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran (also a Democrat, and father-in-law of current candidate for governor Martin O’Malley) established that the petition drive should have been completed last year when the law was actually passed, not in 2006 when Governor Ehrlich’s veto was overriden.

For its part, the Board of Elections petition regulations clearly state that “Acts or parts of Acts passed at the 2005 and 2006 (boldface emphasis mine) Sessions of the General Assembly, if they are successfully petitioned to referendum, will appear on the next general election ballot (November 7, 2006).” So, in my view, Attorney General Curran is incorrect, and the petition should stand if successful.

Admittedly, it would be an uphill battle to pass this referendum, even if the Maryland GOP can get the 50,000 signatures. Likely that won’t be a problem; the trick will be convincing the voters of Maryland, many of whom get their news from the anti-Ehrlich and anti-GOP major media outlets in the state, that a measure that sounds great on the surface is really a thinly disguised partisan play by a party smarting from being out of the governors’ chair for the last four years and scared of a black conservative Republican hopeful for U.S. Senator.

It is good to know that there is a method for Marylanders who are fed up with the stupidity of laws passed by their General Assembly to petition for redress of grievances. Now if they would get motivated to educate the balance of the state on the reasons why these dreadful measures get passed, we can do something about again making our nickname of “The Free State” truly meaningful.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.