All 11 members of Montgomery County council signed a letter to Maryland’s leaders in Annapolis urging them to increase the number of signatures needed to get a question on an election ballot.
Currently, Maryland’s constitution requires potential charter amendments obtain the signatures of 20% of the jurisdiction’s registered voters or a minimum of 10,000 signatures.
Councilmembers believe that is too low. When that provision was ratified in 1978, Montgomery County’s population was 584,000. It now has a population greater than one million.
Requiring 10,000 signatures means that only 1.5% of the county’s 684,032 actively registered voters are needed to put a measure on the ballot, councilmembers pointed out in their letter, which was sent Tuesday.
The letter was sent to Speaker Adrienne Jones and President Bill Ferguson and asks them to “replace the existing requirements with more proportional metrics.”
The Committee for Better Government is working to get a question on the November ballot that would limit the county executive job to two terms. The group has submitted more than 10,000 signatures and is awaiting confirmation from the Board of Elections that it obtained enough valid signatures.
In their letter, the councilmembers noted that not only is that too small a number for Montgomery County, it also is too high a number for Kent County, which according to the 2020 U.S. Census, only has a population of about 20,000.
Adjusting the percentage “to reflect the state’s population growth is essential for strengthening our local democracy,” the councilmembers wrote.
Ballot initiatives are important to our local democracy.
Today my colleagues and I sent a letter to the General Assembly requesting changes to the Maryland Constitution for improving how charter amendments are placed on the ballot. pic.twitter.com/6cvlGnZv1X
— Councilmember Evan Glass (@CMEvanGlass) July 23, 2024
