Whitley v. State Bd. of Elections

Following the passage of Maryland's latest congressional redistricting law, SB 1, Intervenor employed a website-based initiative to gather the signatures necessary to petition SB 1 to referendum on the general election ballot in November 2012. The State Board of Elections certified the petition for referendum after determining that Intervenor had gathered the required number of valid signatures. Petitioners subsequently challenged the State's Board's certification of the petition on the grounds that Intervenor failed to submit a sufficient number of valid signatures, objecting to two classes of signatures validated by the State Board. The circuit court affirmed. The Supreme Court also affirmed, holding (1) petition signatures obtained through the use of a third-party website do not violate the statutory requirement that an individual "include" or "provide" his or her identifying information; and (2) an individual can "self-circulate" a petition by signing both as the voter and as the circulator. View "Whitley v. State Bd. of Elections" on Justia Law