Citizens in Charge

Today, Citizens in Charge, a transpartisan national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, presented testimony urging Maryland legislators to restore the state’s referendum process by passing Senate Bill 240. Additionally, the group suggested amending the bill to give the Board of Elections latitude in verifying the identity of the registered voter.

Citizens in Charge grassroots director Brandon Holmes testified today in support of SB 240 and the proposed amendments to the bill before the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee.

“Marylanders are currently being denied their right to referendum, which is guaranteed under the state constitution, because of a statutory provision,” said Holmes. “We doubt very much that it is the intention of the legislature to hamper the citizens in this way, and yet without passage of this legislation, along with the amendments we’ve suggested, the rights of Maryland citizens will continue to be denied.”

In its current form, SB 240 requires an exact match between an individual’s signed and printed names. Amending SB 240 as proposed by Holmes and Citizens in Charge would simply allow the Board of Elections the same latitude to accept petition signatures, when voters print their name differently than they sign it or sign their first name, for example, as “Will” instead of “William,” as the BOE has had for the past 30 years, prior to the 2008 Court of Appeals ruling in Doe v. Montgomery County BOE.

“Tens of thousands of voters have been silenced when their petition signatures were unreasonably tossed out, and citizen activists have found that the bar is set so high that their fundamental right to referendum could not be effectively exercised,” added Holmes. “Legislators should rectify this problem, because the signatures of voters should count.”

Maryland currently has the harshest standard for a valid petition signature in the nation. By amending and passing SB 240, as Citizens in Charge recommends, the full referendum rights of Maryland citizens can be restored.