Voters Sue MoCo Board of Elections

Yesterday a group of registered Montgomery County voters filed a lawsuit against the county Board of Elections for certifying petitions for an anti-transgender referendum without rigorously verifying that a sufficient number of signatures were actually valid. I've sat with the people checking the petitions, going through the signatures, and I can tell you -- the Board marked a lot of signatures as "OK" (they actually write "OK" in the margin next to them) when they were clearly not okay.

From the press release:

Rockville – With the backing of Equality Maryland, a statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization based in Silver Spring, a group of registered voters in Montgomery County have filed suit against the County Board of Elections, which last week certified petitions from anti-LGBT activists seeking to overturn an anti-discrimination law passed unanimously by the County Council last year. The certification of the petitions has prevented the gender identity anti-discrimination law from going into effect pending a November 2008 general election referendum. The individuals named in the suit include transgender residents, parents, clergy, a law enforcement officer, business owners, a civil rights leader, a child advocate, the head of a women's organization, and an individual who wishes to have her name removed from the petition because it was misrepresented to her by one of its proponents.

"Our initial review of the signatures submitted to the Board of Elections clearly demonstrates that the referendum proponents violated election law in a number of ways, and the Board of Elections did not appropriately conduct the careful review that the law requires," said Silver Spring-based attorney Jonathan Shurberg, who was hired by Equality Maryland to represent the clients. "As a result, this matter will be brought before the courts in Montgomery County to ask a judge to do what has yet to be done – conduct a thorough and searching review of the petitions submitted to the Board of Elections."

The actual lawsuit that was filed is pretty interesting. I will copy and paste the complaints here for you, chopping out the legalese stuff. (The word COMAR means Maryland law.)

• The Petition contains Petition sheets with the names of persons who did not sign the papers in their own proper persons, and such signatures are not genuine and are forgeries, in violation of the Maryland Election Code, applicable COMAR regulations, and the Montgomery County Charter.
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets with the names of persons who are not registered voters, or who are not registered voters at the addresses shown opposite their respective names ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets with the names of persons for whom the addresses stated are not in Montgomery County, and such persons are not registered voters in Montgomery County ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets with the names of persons for whom the addresses given are either missing entirely or are incomplete ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets with the names of persons who have signed the Petition more than one time ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets with the "signatures" of persons which are not signed but rather are printed, and said signatures are not genuine signatures ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets with signatures that consist of neither the individual’s name as it appears on the statewide registration list nor the individual’s surname of registration and at least one full given name and the initials of any other names ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets which bear a circulator's affidavit which is not signed by the circulator, and every signature on such sheets is invalid ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets bearing a circulator's affidavit on which the circulator's address is incorrect in that the purported circulator does not reside at the address indicated on the Petition sheet, and every signature on such sheets is invalid ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets bearing a circulator's affidavit which is not signed by the circulator in his/her own proper person, and such signatures are not genuine and are forgeries ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets that the purported circulator did not personally circulate and every signature on such sheets is invalid ...
  
• The Petition contains Petition sheets bearing a circulator's affidavit on which the circulator's address is incomplete, and every signature on such sheets is invalid ...
  
• The Petition contains numerous Petition sheets reflecting alterations indicative of fraud by the circulator such as circulator and/or signer information that appears to have been covered with “white out” ...
  
• The Petition contains numerous Petition sheets on which it appears, that individuals signed Petitions not in the presence of the purported circulator as evidenced by numerous Petition sheets with only one signature with the same circulators, including but not limited to Ruth Jacobs and Theresa Rickman. Such activity demonstrates a pattern of fraud and disregard for the Maryland Election Code, applicable COMAR regulations, and the Montgomery County Charter, to such a degree that every sheet circulated by said individuals should be invalidated in order to protect the integrity of the electoral process.
  
• The Petition contains numerous Petition sheets on which the circulator purported to attest to his or her own signature ...
  
• The Petition contains numerous Petition sheets on which the date of the circulator affidavit is before the date of the signatures purported to be attested to ...
  
• The Petition contains numerous Petition sheets on which the date of the circulator affidavit appears to have been altered, and that without such alteration, the date of the circulator affidavit would have been prior to the date of the signatures purported to be attested to, in violation of the Maryland Election Code, applicable COMAR regulations, and the Montgomery County Charter.
  
• The Petition contains numerous Petition sheets on which other disqualifying errors, not specifically enumerated herein, are contained ...
  
• Defendant BOARD OF ELECTIONS ignored the deficiencies in the Petition’s form and content, and the unfair, inaccurate and misleading tactics used by its proponents to obtain signatures ...
  
• Although certain signatures were invalidated during its review, Defendant BOARD OF ELECTIONS either ignored or did not properly analyze the categories set forth above.

The idea then is that the Board of Elections is being sued because they didn't check the signatures well enough. All these kinds of errors got through, and so the Board ended up certifying petitions that never should have been, they announced that the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever had enough valid signatures when they probably didn't, and if it isn't challenged it will go on the ballot in November.

I was talking to somebody on the Metro yesterday who had encountered the petition people at a Giant. They asked her to sign a petition to keep men out of the ladies room. She said she guessed it was something about transgender discrimination, but there was no clue. Nobody ever said anything about discrimination or gender identity or anything. Somebody else said they were being told that the petition was to put the law to a vote "for or against," so if you were for it you should sign, too. No, the referendum is to repeal the law, it was already adopted, we didn't need the public to vote on that. The people with the petitions were mostly clueless, they just said what they'd been told to say. It is interesting that this lawsuit names the two most-central shower-nuts by name, as demonstrating "a pattern of fraud and disregard for the Maryland Election Code, applicable COMAR regulations, and the Montgomery County Charter."