Greens, Libertarians prevail in Circuit Court
An Anne Arundel County Circuit judge yesterday ruled in favor of Maryland's Greens and Libertarians in their quest to get back on election ballots -- determining that failure to fulfill the controversial middle name requirement is in itself not a reason to toss a petition signature.
The question now is whether the State Board of Elections will appeal the ruling. It has about a month to decide. A spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General, which represents the elections board, said officials are reviewing their options.
An appeal could eventually land the contentious middle name issue back before the Court of Appeals -- a step the state may or may not want to take with a far more politically heated petition waiting in the wings.
The Greens and Libertarians sued the State Board of Elections for invalidating signatures of registered voters. Each had needed to collect 10,000 valid signatures to remain as official parties in the state, and each turned in about 16,000, though about 3,000 signers could not be identified as voters.
Working off previous Court of Appeals rulings that established tight requirements on petitions, the board invalidated thousands of signatures where the person failed to use his or her middle initial or middle name, abbreviated a first name or used some other imprecise name configuration.
But retired Judge Eugene M. Lerner, brought in specially for the case, agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that the printed name is but one of many ways to verify that the signer is a registered voter.
Mark Grannis, a Washington-based attorney representing the Greens and Libertarians, quoted a more recent Court of Appeals ruling on messy signatures that indicated "sufficient cumulative information" (emphasis added) was needed to validate a signature.
Comments
Messy signatures are an equivalent of an endorsement. Signatures need not be legible, simply reproducible. This goes back to "making your mark" that identifies you relative to someone else.
The notion that a political appointee (including Maryland's Court of Appeals) could invalidate my signature because he/she couldn't read it is an anathema to good government. The appointee's potentially agenda driven "bad eyesight" should not be an impediment to the democratic process; from ANY political perspective.
Posted by: MDR | June 22, 2011 10:33 AM
MDR: You are quite correct. The issue is not whether a signature is legible. The issue is whether your signature generally has the same appearance, i.e., whether it is reproducible, and whether a reasonable person who is familiar with your signature, can look at it and say, "Yes, that's MDR's signature."
Posted by: trebort49 | June 22, 2011 12:25 PM
ACLU cooperating attorney Brent V. Manning "an e-signature is equally valid so long as the signer intends it to be his signature"
UTAH SUPREME COURT VALIDATES USE OF E-SIGNATURES IN ELECTORAL PROCESS
http://www.acluutah.org/PR062210ESig.html
Posted by: Anonymous | June 22, 2011 12:58 PM
What's amusing is Linda Lamone's signature sometimes looks like it reads Linda Lomon. In fact, the few examples out there are hard to decipher. So was she arguing to invalidate everything she ever signed? Such a silly argument. How can we have a state that does NOT require identification to vote claim that our signatures must match how we registered to vote (including middle initials) and be legible? What a freaking joke. It's a one-party state that only cares about solidifing their power...I mean c'mon, why else does our state that preaches equality and fairness not have a nonpartisan redistricting process yet?
Posted by: Filo | June 23, 2011 11:47 AM