Signatures

Opponents of a new law to extend in-state tuition discounts to illegal immigrants delivered nearly 75,000 more signatures to the state Thursday, a number they believe is more than enough to keep the measure off the books until voters have their say. After submitting more than 47,000 valid signatures last month, they needed fewer than 8,500 more to be certified by the State Board of Elections to get the law onto the 2012 ballot. If they are successful, it would be the 18th time in Maryland history that a law approved by the General Assembly was sent to voters for reconsideration.

With days to go before Carroll County's general election ballots must go to print, a judge denied yesterday a last-ditch effort by the Green Party to run a candidate for commissioner. Carroll Circuit Judge Michael M. Galloway said he sympathized with the Green Party's effort to show that elections officials wrongly tossed out signatures from a petition to place its candidate on the Nov. 5 ballot. But because the injunction was filed Monday -- and the deadline for submitting ballots for printing is in four days -- he said he did not have time to review the signatures in question.

The drive to place a charter government initiative before Carroll County voters has stalled.Petitions placed at the county's eight town halls nearly a month ago have garnered less than 50 signatures, far from the 3,500 needed from registered voters to force the County Commissioners to appoint a charter committee.In May, the county's eight mayors asked the commissioners to revisit charter, which failed at the polls four years ago. The commissioners refused to take any action until a petition gauged voter interest.

Opponents of the congressional redistricting plan devised by Gov. Martin O'Malley and General Assembly leaders said Thursday they have passed the first test for putting the measure on the November ballot by gathering enough voters' signatures to keep the effort going. The group filed an estimated 25,000 signatures Thursday night, well more than the 18,579 needed by June 1. If enough signatures are certified by the state elections board, the challengers will have until July 1 to collect the remainder of the necessary 55,736 signatures.

With days to go before Carroll County's general election ballots must go to print, a judge yesterday denied a last-ditch effort by the Green Party to run a candidate for commissioner. Carroll Circuit Judge Michael M. Galloway said he sympathized with the Green Party's effort to show that elections officials wrongly tossed out signatures from a petition to place its candidate on the Nov. 5 ballot. But because the injunction was filed Monday -- and the deadline for submitting ballots for printing is four days off -- he said he did not have time to review the signatures in question.

A Republican-sponsored petition drive intended to require a super-majority of county council votes to increase taxes has failed to collect enough signatures to place the issue before voters in November. Ken Aldrich, who organized the drive for the local GOP, said his team collected about 5,000 of the 10,000 signatures required to put the measure on the ballot. Monday is the deadline for submitting the names. "We lose. We're not going to pursue it any more" this year, Aldrich said.

Leaders of a group seeking a referendum on Maryland's new gay rights law delivered their petitions to the secretary of state's office in Annapolis yesterday, confident that they had more than the 46,000 signatures needed. "We are very pleased," said Tres Kerns, co-founder of TakeBackMaryland.org, the group seeking to abolish the law. "We had people from every county in the state involved. People might be surprised to learn that our largest number of signatures came from Baltimore County, where we had over 8,500."

Howard County residents have tried four times in the past nine years to challenge local government decisions on taxes and land use by referendum and failed each time to get the questions on the ballot. They've been rebuffed by opinions of the county's law department and by the courts, getting hung up on legal technicalities and the details of how signatures are validated. As difficult as it is to put a question on the local ballot, the bar would rise a bit higher if voters on Election Day approve one particular county charter revision, one of five changes proposed this year.

A coalition has submitted nearly 24,000 signatures supporting a referendum on Anne Arundel County's fall ballot that could overturn a decision allowing the state's largest slots casino at a mall. Citizens Against Slots at the Mall submitted 23,702 signatures to the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections on Thursday afternoon in support of a referendum that would allow county voters to decide whether to permit slots at Arundel Mills, according to the groups coordinating the effort.