Early Voting

Unless a court intervenes, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s effort to bring Maryland's early-voting law to referendum has failed for a lack of legal signatures. That's the good news. Now it's time to put a moratorium on all the unfounded accusations that have accompanied this dubious effort. Last week, the State Board of Elections found that Marylanders for Fair Elections submitted petitions with 16,924 valid names - or 138 fewer than needed to put the law on the fall ballot. Yet even in defeat, proponents couldn't help but claim that fraud was to blame.

Despite high-profile races — including a Republican presidential contest that brought the candidates swinging through the state and a nationally significant House race in Western Maryland — elections officials predict that turnout could fall to near-record lows in Tuesday's primary. The ho-hum reaction in Maryland is being driven by several factors: lack of a competitive race at the top of the Democratic ticket; a primary date that falls in the middle of spring break for many schools; and the inability of most of the GOP presidential candidates to organize in one of the bluest states in the nation.

Just days after opponents of early voting took their case to the state's highest court, Democratic leaders shot back yesterday - announcing a campaign to encourage voters to take advantage of Maryland's new but contested law that allows some polling places to open for five days before Election Day. "While the legal fight may very well continue, I think it's incumbent upon all of us to prepare the electorate to take advantage of this law that has been...

With a local judicial race, a couple of congressional nominations and the Republican presidential nomination hanging in the balance, Harford County voters will have something to decide if they bother to show up at the polls for Tuesday's presidential primary election. Six days of early voting for the primary closed Thursday evening with 3,246 casting ballots at the McFaul Activity Center in Bel Air. The total represents 2.56 percent of Harford's 126,736 registered Republican and Democratic voters, according to the Maryland Board of Elections.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. escalated his assault yesterday on an early-voting system approved by the Democrat-controlled legislature this year, calling it a "farce," questioning its integrity and renewing threats of a lawsuit at the state Board of Public Works meeting. Heading into what many believe will be the most competitive election season in modern Maryland history, each party is accusing the other of manipulating the election system to its advantage. Republicans say Democrats realize they could never win a fair fight and have chosen to install new rules and procedures that invite fraud and deceit.

The leaders of a Republican-backed petition drive to overturn Maryland's early-voting law filed suit in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court yesterday, alleging that the State Board of Elections illegally disqualified part of their effort. Marylanders for Fair Elections, a volunteer group with ties to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., filed the lawsuit in response to the board's determination last week that one part of the group's drive fell 138 signatures short of moving forward. The group also filed a request for an emergency hearing on the issue, which is scheduled for tomorrow.

An Anne Arundel County judge dealt a major blow yesterday to a governor-backed petition drive that seeks to overturn early-voting provisions enacted by the General Assembly. It was the most recent setback for Marylanders for Fair Elections, a volunteer group supported by Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. The organization is trying to place a referendum on the November ballot that could reverse two early-voting bills passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature. The group has been embroiled in a dispute with the State Board of Elections about whether it has submitted enough valid signatures to move forward with the effort.

Opponents of allowing selected polling stations to open five days before Election Day reached a milestone in their drive to overturn the measure yesterday, while Democrats intensified their rhetoric in support of the plan. The State Board of Elections confirmed yesterday that Marylanders for Fair Elections, a volunteer group backed by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s re-election campaign, collected more than the 17,062 valid signatures necessary to meet a first deadline in a petition drive against early-voting procedures adopted by the General Assembly.

With many people waiting in line for hours to cast their ballots, Marylanders voted overwhelmingly yesterday to change the way future elections are conducted by allowing polling places to open two weeks before Election Day. With more than half of precincts reporting, voters were approving Question 1 by a margin of more than 2 to 1, setting the stage for Maryland to join the 32 other states which allow early voting. Millions of Americans in those states cast their votes in the weeks leading up to Election Day. Specifically, the change approved to Maryland's constitution allows the General Assembly to enact an early-voting law. The Maryland Democratic party has pushed the idea for years, arguing that opening the polls sooner would afford more people an opportunity to participate in elections.

Senate Republicans accused a State Board of Elections officer yesterday of providing information to Democrats to bolster their case for overturning the governor's vetoes on voting bills. Democrats called the charge an example of partisan politics. Sen. Alan H. Kittleman, who represents parts of Carroll and Howard counties, blamed the director of candidacy and campaign finance at the elections board for offering "talking points" to a member of Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller's staff.

With the addition of early voting to the local political scene, a new dynamic has been added to the electoral process. Even so, it appears based on turnout the tradition of going out to vote on an official Election Day has something of a luster that doesn't carry over to the election days of the early voting schedule. Either way, the early voting participation numbers indicate voter turnout will be anemic come Tuesday, April 3. That's not just a shame. It's a disgrace. Men and women remain in harm's way overseas fighting to secure a nation - actually more of an ungovernable territory - that was used as base of operations for the9/11attacks of a decade ago. In other words, they're fighting to protect our basic freedoms from those who would impose a particular brand of tyranny, the imposition of a particular variety of religious law. This is counter to our tradition of acknowledging that the almighty is revealed to different people in different ways, and that faith is a matter of personal choice.

There were times around mid-day outside the polling place at the Westminster Senior Center on March 24 when the campaign volunteers — all three or four of them, standing in the misty rainy chill — easily outnumbered the voters. "It's light, maybe six or eight people an hour," said Krista Kniesler, a candidate for the Carroll County Board of Education, who stood under an umbrella handing out campaign literature in front of the senior center. "Maybe (the light turnout) is because of the rain, or maybe people don't know," about early voting, Kniesler added.

WESTMINSTER — Early voting centers for the 2012 Presidential Primary Election are open for voting Sunday, March 25 from noon to 6 p.m. and March 26-29 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters may vote at a designated early voting center in their county of residence. In Carroll County, an early voting center is being held at Westminster Senior Center, 125 Stoner Ave. in Westminster. More information about early voting is available at http://www.elections.state.md.us/voting/early_voting.html.

Early voting for this year's April 3 federal primary election in Maryland begins Saturday and continues through Thursday. Forty-six early voting centers will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day except for Sunday, when the centers will be open from noon to 6 p.m. A full list of voting centers in the state can be found on the State Board of Elections website at http://www.elections.state.md.us/voting/early_voting.html or by calling 800-222- VOTE...

Your recent editorial stated that there is little reason to require a photo ID to vote ("The phantom menace," Feb. 27). But there is another way to look at this. Two of my children have been away from home for several years, yet they still show up as active voters on the rolls at our precinct, despite my telling officials there that my children have left home. The elections judge writes this down at every election. But when that information gets back to election headquarters, anyone with access could copy those names and use them to cast ballots elsewhere during early voting.

The Carroll County Senate Delegation will host a public hearing and voting session on legislation affecting the county on Friday, Feb. 3, at 2 p.m., at the Carroll County Office Building, 225 N. Center Street, Room 003 (public hearing room), Westminster. The Board of County Commissioners has offered to broadcast the hearing and voting session as a live stream webcast on the county website This legislative package voting session has traditionally been held in Annapolis during the legislative session, but was relocated to Westminster to facilitate public involvement.

Change can come slowly, at times, to the Land of Pleasant Living. Case in point: new ways of voting. Starting this week, Marylanders can avoid long lines on Election Day by casting their ballots days in advance at early-voting locations around the state. Or if they prefer, they can mail in an absentee ballot. No excuses necessary. This newspaper has long advocated in favor of such common-sense changes, and we're pleased to see Maryland finally beginning to catch up. But much more could still be done to make it easier for citizens to exercise their right to vote.

Maryland's highest court rejected yesterday a Republican-backed challenge to the state's early-voting law, ending hopes of getting the issue on the ballot as a referendum and greatly increasing the likelihood that voters will have an additional five days to get to the polls this fall. The Maryland Court of Appeals issued a brief order yesterday afternoon, a few hours after hearing oral arguments, and said it would explain its decision in a later opinion. The decision lets stand a ruling by the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court that a missed deadline by supporters of the proposed referendum doomed its chances.

Baltimore voters trickled into polling places for the first day of early voting in the citywide primary elections, prompting the director of the city elections board to describe turnout as "really bad. " By 5 p.m., Thursday, 994 of the city's 369,651 registered voters had cast ballots, according to Abigail Goldman, deputy director of the Baltimore City Board of Elections. That's a turnout of 0.3 percent. The city's five early-voting locations were prepared. Board of Elections director Armstead B. Crawley Jones Sr. reported no problems.

Baltimore voters can begin casting ballots in the city's mayoral primary election Thursday, as the early-voting period begins. The city's 369,651 registered voters will be able to go to the polls from Thursday through Saturday and again from Tuesday, Sept. 6, to Thursday, Sept. 8. The five city voting centers will be open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Candidates said they planned to visit the early voting sites Thursday as the first voters headed to the polls in the citywide races.