{"id":11474,"date":"2018-07-10T07:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-07-10T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11474"},"modified":"2018-07-09T18:01:21","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T22:01:21","slug":"floreen-faces-an-uphill-climb-to-get-on-the-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=11474","title":{"rendered":"Floreen Faces an Uphill Climb to Get on the Ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

As has been previously written both here<\/a> and in Bethesda Magazine<\/a>, Council Member Nancy Floreen faces two hurdles in getting on the ballot as an independent candidate for Executive.\u00a0 First, there is the question of whether she can change her registration from Democratic to unaffiliated in time to access the ballot as a non-Democrat.\u00a0 That issue is playing out now.\u00a0 Second, she faces a petition signature requirement.\u00a0 That\u2019s going to be tough.<\/p>\n

State law<\/a> requires that an independent candidate seeking to get on the ballot for a general election must gather a number of voter signatures equal to the lesser of 10,000 or 1% of registered voters by the first Monday in August (which is August 6th<\/sup> this year).\u00a0 In Floreen\u2019s case, the relevant number is around 6,500.\u00a0 That might seem doable EXCEPT that state<\/a> law<\/a> is very exacting on how petition signatures are evaluated by boards of election.\u00a0 Among the requirements are the following.<\/p>\n

Petition circulators do not have to be registered voters or even residents of Maryland, but they must be at least age 18.<\/p>\n

Circulators may be paid but petition signers may not be paid.<\/p>\n

Circulators must sign an affidavit on each petition signature page attesting to the following:<\/p>\n

All identifying information given by the circulator is true and correct;<\/p>\n

Signatures were placed on the petition in the circulator\u2019s presence; and<\/p>\n

Based on the circulator\u2019s best knowledge and belief, each signature on the page is genuine and each signer is a registered voter in Maryland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The circulator must sign and date the affidavit.\u00a0 Any signature on the page that is dated after the circulator\u2019s affidavit is invalid.<\/p>\n

Smudged and\/or illegible signatures are rejected so signing in pencil is discouraged.<\/p>\n

A voter may not sign a petition more than once.<\/p>\n

Voters may not sign on behalf of their spouses.<\/p>\n

Signers must provide the full month, day and year of signing.\u00a0 The circulator should not fill in that information unless the signer asks for help.\u00a0 Ditto marks are prohibited.<\/p>\n

The signer\u2019s current permanent residence address must be provided.\u00a0 Business addresses are not permitted.\u00a0 Post office boxes are permitted only if there is no street and house number designation for the voter’s residence and only if the post office box address is on record with the election office.<\/p>\n

There are very specific requirements on how the signer\u2019s name should appear.\u00a0 According to the state\u2019s FAQ document<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The name either has to match the registration list or include all parts of the name required in the statute. Section 6-203 of the Election Law Article states \u201cTo sign a petition, an individual shall: (1) sign the individual\u2019s name as it appears on the statewide voter registration list or the individual\u2019s surname of registration and at least one full given name and the initials of any other names.\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, if a voter is registered as Margaret Hall Smith, it is permissible for her to sign as Margaret H. Smith or M. Hall Smith. But M.H. Smith or Margaret Smith is not permissible and will be invalidated. Additionally, the use of her nickname, Peggy Smith or her married name Mrs. John Smith will be invalidated. If a voters\u2019 registered name has a suffix (i.e. Jr., Sr., III, etc.) the signature will not be invalidated if the signer fails to include it on the petition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The State Board of Elections\u2019 procedures manual for petitions<\/a> provides further discussion of this.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If this seems daunting, well, it is.\u00a0 Consider the recent experience of MoCo\u2019s greatest petition circulator of all time, Robin Ficker, who has gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures over the last four-plus decades.\u00a0 It took Ficker more than a year to gather over 18,000 signatures for his 2016 term limits petition, of which 12,573 were ultimately verified by the county\u2019s Board of Elections<\/a>.\u00a0 Yes, others besides Ficker gathered some of the signatures, but Ficker supervised the effort.\u00a0 If the greatest of all time has an error rate of approximately one third, what would the error rate be for any new or paid circulators retained by Floreen?\u00a0 She is going to need a LOT more than 6,500 signatures to survive scrutiny by the board of elections and, possibly, the courts to make it on the ballot.\u00a0 Plus the fact that the petition is due on August 6 \u2013 less than a month away \u2013 puts immense pressure on the whole process.<\/p>\n

Nancy Floreen needs a great election lawyer.\u00a0 Now.\u00a0 She needs a significant number of circulators who are trained in the State of Maryland\u2019s petition requirements.\u00a0 Now.\u00a0 They need to be on the streets gathering signatures.\u00a0 Now.\u00a0 And she needs many thousands of dollars to pay for all this.\u00a0 Now.<\/p>\n

Or else she won\u2019t be on the ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. As has been previously written both here and in Bethesda Magazine, Council Member Nancy Floreen faces two hurdles in getting on the ballot as an independent candidate for Executive.\u00a0 First, there is the question of whether she can change her registration from Democratic to unaffiliated in time to access the ballot as … Continue reading Floreen Faces an Uphill Climb to Get on the Ballot<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,492,44],"tags":[1545,1627,1478],"class_list":["post-11474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-county-executive","category-nancy-floreen","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-county-executive","tag-nancy-floreen"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2Z4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11474"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11479,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11474\/revisions\/11479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}