The Court of Appeals, the state?s highest court, upheld on Tuesday a lower court decision that effectively prevents one referendum that would stop the state?s early voting this election year.
However, voters will get to vote on an emergency version of the law that allows them to start casting ballots for five days a week before the election. In essence, citizens will get to vote early on whether to have early voting.
The judges will explain their order in a later opinion.
The crucial court decision hinged on whether the leader of the drive should have had someone checking his mail and fax machine while he was on vacation in June. The seven red-robed members of the court debated with attorneys what the constitution provided in bringing to referendum the early voting bill vetoed in 2005.
But the fate of the referendum drive to stop early voting revolved around a June 8 letter sent to Thomas Roskelly, head of Marylanders for Fair Elections, by elections administrator Linda Lamone, telling him that his group did not get enough signatures in the first phase of petitioning.
“I?m severely disappointed,” Roskelly said. “It?s all based on the fact that I did not respond to a letter I did not receive.”
Roskelly was out of town and did not actually pick up the letter from the post office until June 17, and did not contact an attorney until June 19. He thus missed a 10-day deadline to try to block Lamone?s decision in the court. That?s what an Anne Arundel Circuit judge determined in June, leading Roskelly to appeal the decision.
“There was no indication that the signature drive was dead on June 8,” lawyer James West told the court.
There was “no indication that he had to make a response.” A telephone call to Roskelly?s cell phone would have alerted him to the crucial time element, West said.
“How was she supposed to know” Roskelly did not get the letter sent by both mail and fax? Judge Alan Wilner wondered. “You can?t make a person pick up their mail.”
Judge Dale Cathell asked, “Where are we supposed to draw the line” when someone doesn?t receive notice of a decision? Eighteen months? November?
“It?s not early voting that we object to. It?s early voting without safeguards,” Roskelly said.
