Interesting petition facts

As many of you should know, the effort to stop the ill-considered SB176, better known as the in-state tuition for illegal immigrants bill, has been a fairly resounding success so far – over 58,000 petition signatures were turned in by the May 31 progress deadline when only around 18,000 were needed. Proponents of illegal immigrants are already threatening legal action to allow the law to take effect.

But thanks to the advocacy group Help Save Maryland, here are some interesting petition facts:

  • The top five jurisdictions for signing are Baltimore County with 14,307, Anne Arundel County with 8,586, Harford County with 5,922, Carroll County with 5,820, and Washington County with 3,310.
  • The county with the largest number of registered voters is Montgomery County, but unsurprisingly the liberal bastion has contributed just 2,301 signatures to the effort.
  • Locally among Lower Shore counties Dorchester leads with 587 collected, with Wicomico County second at 383, Worcester at 305, and Somerset the lowest in the state with just 50. But on the Eastern Shore we are pikers – Cecil checks in with 1,830, Talbot has 1,218, Caroline has 1,164, Queen Anne’s has 1,114, and even little Kent County has 435. Clearly we have some work to do!
  • According to petition drive leader Delegate Neil Parrott, “(P)lease note that over 25% of the signatures have come from Democrats, 15% from Unaffiliated voters, and the remainder from Republicans and 3rd party voters.” So it’s not just a Republican issue.

Between the Lower Shore counties there are 121,281 registered voters – at least that was the last report. We have signed up barely 1% of the voters in a conservative area where we should get AT LEAST 10 to 15 percent. If we hit the 10% threshold here, that would be about 20 percent of the total needed for the state.

It’s time to get to work.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

12 thoughts on “Interesting petition facts”

  1. Something worth pointing out: totals for each county don’t tell the full story about the effort from each county. I’ve been collecting signatures at metro stations in Prince George’s, and the majority of those who have signed at metro were actually from other counties, some quite far afield. Even when we’ve been collecting signatures at the PGGOP office, we’ve gotten Charles Co. people coming in as well as PG people. I imagine folks in other counties have gotten our residents to sign as well.

  2. We’re talking about kids who went to 4 years of high school here. Kids who grew up here. Kids who broke no laws. Kids whose parents have been paying into property taxes for years…

    For shame. For shame.

    You want Maryland to be competitive? Let the best go on to college.

    You want to put Maryland on welfare (like most of the “red states”)? Then keep it up. Make us small.

  3. @M “You want to put the bill to a vote?”

    It was already put to a vote, and it passed. This recall effort is something else entirely, and it comes from ill intent… an intent to harm. This will harm good kids and harm ourselves in the process.

  4. @M “What is the intent to harm in that…?”

    College is very important. Maintaining high quality colleges that admit only the worthy (and then make it affordable to them) is what great nations do.

    Failing to do so does harm to our community and does harm to those who have dreams of future success. Here’s a quote for you from a decent movie:

    Lt. Col. Frank Slade: “But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There’s no prostetic for that.”

    This bill will cost the state nothing, but it will make it more difficult to get into our flagship schools. And that’s a good thing…

  5. Please refer to the fiscal note for SB167 before asserting “this bill will cost the state nothing.” It looks like it could cost us $3 million a year by 2016. I know that may be a drop in the bucket in your estimation, but these bills add up.

    And again, you haven’t filled me in on where granting in-state tuition to anyone is a right.

  6. @M “It looks like it could cost us $3 million a year by 2016”

    That’s the cost of having more students at public universities in general. We pay that cost with or without that bill. The cost is quite small and the basic assumption that the universities will become larger because of this bill is only a crude guess. Oh, and that $3M is less than 0.1% of the UMd system budget.

    You can’t tell me this is all about saving 0.1% of the university budget, can you?

    @M “And again, you haven’t filled me in on where granting in-state tuition to anyone is a right.”

    Do you know what a “right” is? This has nothing to do with rights. This has everything to do with public policy… doing what is best for the public. The very existence of UMd is based on policy, not rights.

    As I see it, you want the local kids in the incoming freshman class at UMd to be determined by parentage. I want to see the incoming class determined by merit (smart, study hard,…). I know which of those is better for our state and our future economy.

    I want to hear your argument for selection by parentage… (or should I guess?).

  7. We are talking about whether people who aren’t citizens of the state (or nation) should pay the same rate as those who are citizens of the state, but may not necessarily be citizens of the nation. Again, the issue isn’t whether these children go to college but how much they pay. Should someone here illegally, whether it was his or her fault, be considered a citizen of the state for that purpose, at the expense of those who have done it right?

    Remember, a college has finite resources. Opening up the schools to everyone will cost us more and the idea behind charging more for out-of-state students is that they don’t contribute to the tax rolls of the state otherwise. If one is here illegally, there’s a pretty good chance they’re not contributing their share to the state either.

  8. @M “If one is here illegally, there’s a pretty good chance they’re not contributing their share to the state either.”

    And there’s a pretty good chance that they’re paying more than their fare share too. Their parent are most certainly paying property taxes, and they often leave tax refunds on the table. That argument fails.

    @M “…who aren’t citizens of the state…”

    Resident, not citizen. Resident.

    Immigration reform should have been properly handled 50 years ago. This is an opportunity to correct errors made at the federal level. We took that opportunity. It is good.

  9. I don’t want to blame anybody, but I would have been the first to sign the petition if I knew it was being circulated. I listen to the radio virtually all the time I am in my vehicle, which is off and on all day, and I didnt hear anything about it. (I seldom read the Daily Times because they are incapable of delivering it anywhere like reliably.)

    This kind of thing needs to be advertised and supported vigorously.

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