Two high-profile ballot initiatives — scrapping a new ambulance fee and imposing term limits for elected officials — are essentially dead in Montgomery County thanks to sloppy handwriting, missing middle initials and a new standard for signatures that some argue makes it nearly impossible to land voter referendums on the ballot in Maryland.
The majority of more than 30,000 signatures to spike the recently adopted ambulance fee aren’t valid, according to local election officials. And the author of a petition to put term limits on the county executive and council expects the same fate.
The defeatist tone comes as the Montgomery County Board of Elections says it will enforce a court decision not allowing discrepancies between the name signed on a petition and that in the voter registration database. It also means supporters of the voter referendums won’t have enough time to gather the required signatures for placement on the ballot in November.
Under a 2008 Maryland Court of Appeals ruling in Jane Doe v. Montgomery County Board of Elections, individuals must print and sign their name exactly as it appears on the voter registration list or provide their registered last name, full first name and initials for any middle names.
For example, a signature by Joseph Smith rather than the name of record, Joseph A. Smith, isn’t allowed.
“This makes it almost impossible to get anything on the ballot,” complained Eric Bernard, executive director of the county’s volunteer firefighters, who was behind the push to kill the ambulance fee. “I can’t help but think in the back of my mind this is politically motivated.”
Officials with the county board of elections, however, say they are merely following instructions from the Maryland Board of Elections. Illegible letters also disqualify signatures, a standard not applied to cashing checks, verifying receipts or other government documents. Nor do county residents have to provide identification when voting.
The volunteer firefighters have sent a letter to the state board asking for revisions to the new standard but don’t expect any changes this close to Election Day.
Both Bernard and Robin Ficker, the author of the term-limit initiative, say they are considering legal challenges.
“Did John Hancock have to sign his middle name?” Ficker asked. “They say this is to prevent fraud, but I’ve done this more than 20 times without a hint of it.”
Even some election officials echoed the criticism.
“There are clearly not going to be enough signatures,” said Nancy Dacek, secretary of Montgomery’s board of elections. “It’s not fair at all — to spend that much time gathering names basically for nothing.”
