Signatures

The two sides in Maryland's fight over same-sex marriage agree on this: It won't be over until November. With the state Senate's approval Thursday night of the governor's bill to legalize civil marriage for same-sex couples, opponents are expected to mobilize quickly to gather the signatures to petition the legislation to referendum. State elections officials say they are already getting calls seeking information on how to start the process. Even the bill's staunchest supporters expect its opponents to easily gather the 55,736 signatures necessary to put the question on the November ballot.

The Green and Libertarian parties are launching new petition drives to get their candidates for president and other offices on Maryland's November ballot after losing a battle before the state's highest court. The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled Monday that state elections officials were correct to disqualify thousands of signatures on petitions previously circulated by the two parties. Many signatures were thrown out as illegible or not consistent with the voter's official registration card.

The opponents to Maryland's new same-sex marriage law are holding a series of closed-door training sessions to teach volunteers how to properly collect signatures to petition the measure to referendum. In an email, the Maryland Marriage Alliance said it wants to "gather a minimum" of 150,000 signatures by May 31. "Past efforts have proven that the Board of Elections will invalidate at least 30% of the signatures, so it is imperative that we gather thousands and get it right!" according to the email.

Moving to the forefront of social media privacy law nationwide, the Maryland General Assembly has passed legislation prohibiting employers in the state from asking current and prospective employees for their user names and passwords to websites such as Facebook and Twitter. If Gov. Martin O'Malley signs the bill — his office said it was one of hundreds of bills it has yet to review — the bill would make Maryland the first state in the nation to set such a restriction into law. Other states are considering similar legislation, including Illinois and California.

A petition drive to reverse a portion of the 30-year redevelopment plan for downtown Columbia by referendum appears to be gaining momentum. Late Friday, organizers of the drive turned in 40 percent more signatures than required for the first deadline they faced, and they vowed to continue working. The group, Taxpayers Against Giveaways, turned in 3,510 signatures, spokesman Russell Swatek said, far more than the 2,500 required. They now have until April 30 to pass the 5,000 mark, which is Howard County's threshold for petitioning a County Council zoning vote to referendum.

Opponents of a casino at Arundel Mills mall appear to have enough signatures to force a voters' referendum in November that could block the largest site of the state's fledging slots effort. According to its Web site, the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections has accepted 19,054 signatures - more than the necessary 18,970 - on a petition to place a slots referendum on the fall ballot. The petition seeks to overturn a hard-won zoning measure to allow a 4,750-machine parlor to be built on a mall parking lot. Slots opponents submitted 40,407 signatures.

British writer Aldous Huxley once observed that the only "completely consistent" people were dead. If so, then the majority of Maryland's highest court can be congratulated for producing incontrovertible evidence that they are still very much alive and breathing. In a 5-2 decision released Tuesday, the Court of Appeals ruled that just because a person's signature on a petition for referendum is so sloppy that it is impossible for someone else to read doesn't mean that signature should not be counted.

A coalition against slot machine gambling near a popular shopping mall has submitted thousands of additional signatures to force a vote on the proposal. The coalition, which includes community groups and the Maryland Jockey Club, says it delivered 16,702 signatures to the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections on Friday. Opponents need 18,790 signatures to put a zoning measure needed for the project near Arundel Mills Mall on the November ballot. The elections board already has verified 13,136 signatures.

Lawyers for the developer proposing a billion-dollar slots emporium at Arundel Mills mall argued Tuesday that the Anne Arundel County elections board failed to properly vet an anti-slots petition because it did not compare submitted signatures with those in voter registration records. Anthony Herman, a lawyer for the Cordish Cos. group, said state law calls for the election board to compare the signature on the petition with the signature on file with state voter registration records.

Lawyers at two Maryland firms handling foreclosures filed court documents without actually signing the papers themselves, a development that is calling into question the validity of at least some of the home foreclosure cases in the state. The two attorneys, one based in Hunt Valley and the other in Bethesda, have filed more than 20,000 foreclosure cases in Maryland courts since 2008. The lawyers have acknowledged that in documents filed in court for some of their foreclosure cases their names were signed by others at their behest.

A group that has already put one referendum issue on November's ballot has turned its sights to Maryland's new congressional map, announcing Tuesday that it will try to gather enough signatures to give voters a chance to throw out the redistricting plan. "The map is patently unfair," said Del. Neil C. Parrott, a Frederick County Republican who founded MDPetitions, the group that successfully petitioned Maryland's "Dream Act" to referendum. The Dream Act — a law that would allow some illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates at Maryland colleges and universities — would be overturned if a majority of voters cast ballots against it. The new map of congressional districts will be used in next week's state primary and in November's general election.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will commence a nearly unprecedented six hours of oral argument concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law two years ago tomorrow. The most significant challenge to the act involves the "individual mandate," which compels most individuals to purchase health insurance by 2014 or suffer a monetary penalty. Challengers claim that the provision violates the Commerce Clause, under which Congress has broad authority to regulate interstate commerce, and that sustaining the mandate would permit Congress to enact laws requiring individuals to do whatever it chooses.

The opponents to Maryland's new same-sex marriage law are holding a series of closed-door training sessions to teach volunteers how to properly collect signatures to petition the measure to referendum. In an email, the Maryland Marriage Alliance said it wants to "gather a minimum" of 150,000 signatures by May 31. "Past efforts have proven that the Board of Elections will invalidate at least 30% of the signatures, so it is imperative that we gather thousands and get it right!" according to the email.

The two sides in Maryland's fight over same-sex marriage agree on this: It won't be over until November. With the state Senate's approval Thursday night of the governor's bill to legalize civil marriage for same-sex couples, opponents are expected to mobilize quickly to gather the signatures to petition the legislation to referendum. State elections officials say they are already getting calls seeking information on how to start the process. Even the bill's staunchest supporters expect its opponents to easily gather the 55,736 signatures necessary to put the question on the November ballot.

On paper, Maryland's two biggest wins this season have come against Notre Dame and Miami. The 78-71 win over the Irish at Verizon Center in the BB&T Classic gave the fans hope for this season, but it came against a tired team on the back end of a West Coast trip trying to figure out how to play the rest of the season without its leading scorer. The 75-70- win over the Hurricanes on Tuesday night at Comcast Center came against a team that had won six of its past eight games and had beaten Duke in Durham, N.C., two weeks ago. The team the Terps were facing, and the way they came back by scoring 10 straight points in a game-closing 14-4 run, was the reason their win over Miami was the first signature win of the Mark Turgeon era. Here are some thoughts about how things played out: If the win over the Irish showed Terrell Stoglin's talents as a big-time scorer, the win over Miami showed that the sophomore point guard is buying into Turgeon's season-long struggle to turn his best player into a team player.

Maryland's second-highest court has thrown out an attempt by residents to revive a failed petition drive challenging Howard County's plan for redevelopment of downtown Columbia. The Court of Special Appeals turned down Thursday a challenge by Russell Swatek, who with a group called Taxpayers Against Giveaways organized a petition against a zoning amendment approved by the County Council in 2010. The group had sought to bring the measure before voters as a referendum. The county's Board of Elections turned down the petition, saying the group didn't collect enough valid signatures.

Lawyers for developers of what would be the state's most lucrative slots parlor said Monday that more than one in three ballot signatures seeking to block the project should be thrown out because of "widespread violations" and "systematic fraud." An attorney representing PPE Casino Resorts Maryland, LLC, a subsidiary of Baltimore-based Cordish Cos., claimed that 9,406 of nearly 23,000 signatures approved by the Anne Arundel County elections board are invalid. Removing them would be enough to extinguish the referendum effort, which aims to end Cordish's billion-dollar slots project at the popular Arundel Mills shopping mall, with hopes of steering a similar facility to Laurel Park race course.

The County Council should delay a proposed change to the county charter's provisions for local referenda until state lawmakers ensure that the local Board of Elections won't reject valid petition signatures because of technicalities. The county's Charter Review Commission has recommended an amendment with the potential to raise the number of voter signatures required to bring local laws to referendum. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. As the commission notes, the charter language dates from a time when the county was a lot smaller, and the suggested change would allow for future shifts in population.

When Miami beat Duke on Sunday at Cameron Indoor Stadium, it gave Jim Larranaga his first signature win as the Hurricanes' coach -- something Mark Turgeon is still seeking with Maryland. It could have come last Saturday at Comcast Center, when the Terps built a 9-point lead over North Carolina before a late flurry of bad shots, sloppy ballhandling and defensive lapses led to the Tar Heels leaving with an 83-74 victory. I asked Turgeon on today's ACC media teleconference whether he senses that his young team is panicking and trying to do too much to get that first big win. "I don't think that's the case yet," Turgeon said. "I think we had a lot of close games early in the year, we won those games, but we were better than who we were playing. The game we were playing the other day ... just the mistakes that we made, things that you have to correct really good teams.

Even if the promoters of this year's Grand Prix can't pay all their bills by the end of the year, Baltimore should not give up on auto racing. There are others out there who can run this event. Baltimore Racing Development was able to promote the race, but they fell short on knowing how to run one. Yet I am sure another organization can be put together that will bring a successful race to fruition in a very short time. The infrastructure is now here. The hardest race is the first one, and Baltimore has now done that.