The controversy over the early voting petitions stepped forward Friday after an Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge denied a request by Marylanders for Fair Elections (MFE) to overturn a decision by State Board of Elections administrator Linda Lamone that their petition drive failed to meet the May 31st interim deadline by 138 signatures. However, the drive continued with twice the required 102,000 number turned in by yesterday’s final deadline.
Judge Paul Hackner, a 2002 Glendenning appointee, denied the MFE motion in his decision, which now will be heard by the Court of Appeals in late July.
The decision comes as a continuing series of pitfalls plagues the effort to overturn early voting.
A controversy over whether the referendum challenge was even legal hurt early signature gathering, but 40,000 signatures were turned in for the first May 31 deadline (with about 34,000 being required.) The item prompting the legal challenge was the Board of Elections’ refusal to consider signatures that were delayed in the mailing process, as well as an MFE request to observe the signature verification which was turned down by the state elections board.
The ruling actually centered on whether MFE had submitted its appeal to the Board of Elections in a timely manner. The organization needed to respond within 10 days of receiving notification; however a letter sent on June 8th was not received by Marylanders for Fair Elections chairman Tom Roskelly until he returned from an out-of-state vacation June 17th.
While the decision may deny the Maryland voters an opportunity to cast their ballots on the Senate bill regarding early voting issue itself, the referendum on the companion House of Delegates bill which actually specified the early voting locations (and allows the State Administrator veto power over locations) did make it through the first hurdle and is expected to pass through the second one.
As expected, Democrats were gleeful about the news. From the Washington Times:
“They can make all the baseless, groundless charges they want,” said David Paulson of the Maryland Democratic Party. “It doesn’t hide the fact that they failed.”
The question for the Court of Appeals will be whether the MFE actually failed or if they had a little bit of help in that from a partisan Board of Elections administrator. If she cannot be trusted to judge whether a petition drive fairly met its goals or not without stooping to picayune reasons for denying signatures, how can Free Staters trust that the election results announced come November 7th will be proper?
I’d be curious as well whether the Board of Elections actually verified each signature or did it by random sampling (which is allowed under Maryland elections law in certain instances.) With the number being so close, I’d hope that the Board of Elections actually did the work of verifying each signature – to me, the benefit of the doubt should go to the will of the voter and not the will of the Board to save itself some work, or undo what dastardly deeds are done under the guise of encouraging turnout.
When the rules are changed to require a photo ID for voting and provisions made for assuring one cannot vote multiple times, then I’ll be more amenable to early voting. Right now I see it as a naked power grab by the big-government forces in Annapolis.
Late edit: I looked into the process of appointing judges to the Maryland court system. In Judge Hackner’s instance, he was selected in 2002 by Governor Glendenning as stated. In the case of Circuit Court judges, they are first winnowed out by a judicial nominating commission. Hackner would have fallen under the auspices of Commission District 7, which covers Anne Arundel County. This commission is appointed predominantly (9 of 13) by the governor from lawyers and non-lawyers, with the Maryland Bar Association selecting the remainder. They made the list that Governor Glendenning selected from.
In 2003 Governor Ehrlich got his chance to select his appointees to the court nominating commissions at both the Appellate and Trial levels. Included among them was District 38B candidate Bonnie Luna, who serves as an at-large member of the Appellate Judicial Nominating Commission. With the recent power grab by the legislative branch, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the General Assembly tried to usurp Governor Ehrlich’s right to pick these members should he be reelected.
