Petitions with another 240,000 signatures to put the question of early voting on the November ballot were submitted Friday, but it may have been a fruitless effort after an Anne Arundel County Circuit Court judge upheld the state elections board?s decision to reject the first batch of petitions.
The petitioners have filed an appeal of the judge?s decision.
Judge Paul Hackner rejected the motion of Marylanders for Fair Elections and its head, Tom Roskelly, on the technical grounds that it was filed too late. But Hackner also upheld the decision by elections administrator Linda Lamone to reject the ballot petition because there were not enough valid signatures of registered voters in the first batch of 20,000 signatures handed in on May 31.
“The rules have to be very strictly applied,” Hackner said in his oral opinion issued from the bench. Even though the petition is not completed at that point, “it is a petition nonetheless. ? The board has an obligation [to determine] that a third of the signatures is valid,” he said.
Tom Roskelly, head of the petition drive, called Hackner?s decision a “miscarriage of justice.”
“The law is being twisted,” he said.
The judge based his denial on the narrow grounds that Roskelly had 10 days to respond to Lamone?s letter dated June 8, denying the petitions but failed to do so. Roskelly maintains that he was out of town on vacation, and didn?t receive the letter till June 17.
The new law allows early voting for five days starting a week before the election. But Roskelly and his group maintain that there are not enough safeguards to prevent people from voting multiple times. No identification card is required, and the voter supplies only a name, address and birth date.
The Court of Appeals, the state?s highest court, will hear the appeal July 25.
