Voter Rolls

This is the poster-and-lawn-sign season of Baltimore City politics. Small fortunes are being spent by candidates on signs that are weatherproofed and glow in the dark. If some huckster came up with a sign that sang, there would be a line of eager office-seekers to buy it.Yet signs do not vote, people do.This truth, sadly, seems to have been forgotten by many of the candidates running for election in the city's Sept. 12 primary. While they have been tooting their own horns and knocking door-to-door, few have taken the trouble to register voting-age residents who are not on the rolls.

Add another reason to your analysis of Tuesday's dismal Baltimore primary election turnout - a state that actually doesn't want people to be engaged in the political process, especially if there's a possibility they might want to change it. Despite the crocodile tears of politicians asking "what is wrong" with us uninspired, frustrated voters, behind the scenes Maryland's third and fourth-largest political parties are embroiled in a lawsuit for...

A Baltimore circuit judge ruled yesterday that it would be illegal for the city election board to carry out an order by state election officials to remove more than 32,000 names from the voter rolls.Judge Joseph H. H. Kaplan settled a lawsuit brought by the city board against the state election officials, saying that purging the names would violate a state law that became effective Jan. 1.Under a state law no longer in effect, the names should have been removed from city voting rolls last year, before the statewide elections, as part of the so-called "five-year purge."

State elections officials are seeking a criminal investigation into irregularities in the Harford County voter rolls, which they say have been artificially inflated. The probe comes weeks after Harford officials reported the county had just enough active voters to qualify for additional early-voting centers in 2012. State elections administrator Linda H. Lamone said a staff member in her office discovered names on the county's list of active voters that should have been classified as inactive, a designation that generally indicates people who have moved out of the state.

Nearly one out of four Marylanders who have tried to register to vote at a Motor Vehicle Administration office in the past four years has not been added to the voter rolls, according to state records obtained by The Sun. Though some of these tens of thousands of would-be voters have undoubtedly found alternative methods to register, officials at the State Board of Elections say they field calls every year from residents who say they turned up...

CLEVELAND -- For Tony Minor, the pastor of the Community of Faith Assembly in a rundown section of East Cleveland, Ohio's new voter registration rules have meant spending two extra hours a day collecting half as many registration cards from new voters as he did in past years. Republicans say the new rules are needed to prevent fraud, but Democrats say they are making it much harder to register the poor. In the past year, six states have passed such restrictions, and in three states, including Ohio, civic groups have filed lawsuits, arguing that the rules disproportionately affect poor neighborhoods.

The state election board filed notice yesterday that it intends to appeal a Baltimore circuit judge's ruling that city election officials could not legally purge more than 32,000 names from the voter rolls, as ordered by the panel.The five-member State Administrative Board of Election Laws, polled by telephone, approved the proposal to appeal the case on a 3-1 vote, with one member unavailable. John R. Greiber, attorney for the state board, then filed the notice with the Maryland Court of Special Appeals.

In a spot survey of state offices, the American Civil Liberties Union found only sparse compliance with a law requiring state agencies to make voter registration forms available to the public."

TALLAHASSEE - Florida elections officials decided yesterday to scrap a list of "potential felons" after discovering another flaw that could have proved politically explosive for a state trying to run an undisputed election. The database, maligned for weeks by civil rights advocates, was dumped because it shielded virtually all Hispanic felons from being purged from the voter rolls. The admission came on top of earlier errors, such as including thousands of people on the list whose rights had already been restored.

While it is a serious problem that 144,442 would-be voters who registered via the MVA were not added to the voter rolls ( "Nearly 25 percent of MVA voter registrations fail," Feb. 21) it also plays a huge role in explaining why the same voters are called every nine months for jury duty in Baltimore City. If these "dropped" voters could be added, it would greatly increase the jury pool and jurors would be more willing to serve when they know that everyone is participating and not just the same few. Kitty Deimel, Hampden

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.

The Motor Vehicle Administration is planning to overhaul its voter registration procedures after an analysis showed that one in four motorists who tried to sign up at an MVA office never made it to the voter rolls. The agency plans to discard the paper-based process that lawmakers described as "antiquated" and move to the fully automated system long desired by Maryland State Board of Elections officials, who field angry phone calls every year from Marylanders who discover that they're not registered when they try to vote on Election Day. "There is always room for improvement," said MVA Administrator John Kuo. "We're always constantly looking at other practices around the country.

While it is a serious problem that 144,442 would-be voters who registered via the MVA were not added to the voter rolls ( "Nearly 25 percent of MVA voter registrations fail," Feb. 21) it also plays a huge role in explaining why the same voters are called every nine months for jury duty in Baltimore City. If these "dropped" voters could be added, it would greatly increase the jury pool and jurors would be more willing to serve when they know that everyone is participating and not just the same few. Kitty Deimel, Hampden

Nearly one out of four Marylanders who have tried to register to vote at a Motor Vehicle Administration office in the past four years has not been added to the voter rolls, according to state records obtained by The Sun. Though some of these tens of thousands of would-be voters have undoubtedly found alternative methods to register, officials at the State Board of Elections say they field calls every year from residents who say they turned up...

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.

H oward County League of Women Voters President Grace Kubofcik is feeling more confident that a General Assembly bill making it easier to qualify signatures on referendum petitions will be introduced in January after a meeting with state Sen. Joan Carter Conway, chairwoman of the Health and Environmental Affairs Committee. "She clearly understood the issue," Kubofcik said of the Dec. 10 meeting with several statewide and Howard County League leaders in Conway's district office in Northeast Baltimore.

The team researching allegations of voter fraud for gubernatorial candidate Ellen R. Sauerbrey called Baltimore County police yesterday and demanded the ejection of a 69-year-old Clarksville volunteer as a possible spy.Police would not release the man's identity, because he was not arrested or charged. If Sauerbrey headquarters decides to press charges, the man might have to appear in court, police spokesman E. Jay Miller said, although his only crime would appear to be pocketing two sheets of paper.

Add another reason to your analysis of Tuesday's dismal Baltimore primary election turnout - a state that actually doesn't want people to be engaged in the political process, especially if there's a possibility they might want to change it. Despite the crocodile tears of politicians asking "what is wrong" with us uninspired, frustrated voters, behind the scenes Maryland's third and fourth-largest political parties are embroiled in a lawsuit for...

Howard County residents fighting development of a proposed hotel and golf club said in court on Friday that they should be allowed to revive a petition to block the project, an argument that, if successful, could have broad implications on voter efforts to overturn government actions. The suit challenges an interpretation of Maryland's rules for signatures on petitions that the residents say make it almost impossible to organize a referendum to place any issue before the voters.