Md. State Bd. of Elections v. Libertarian Party of Md., 79

• Decision Date: 21 May 2012
• Docket Number: Sept. Term, 2011.,No. 79,79
• Citation: 426 Md. 488,44 A.3d 1002
• Parties: MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS v. LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF MARYLAND, et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

426 Md. 488

44 A.3d 1002

MARYLAND STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS

v.LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF MARYLAND, et al.

No. 79, Sept. Term, 2011.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

May 21, 2012.

Matthew J. Fader, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Kathleen E. Wherthey and Jeffrey L. Darsie, Asst. Attys. Gen., Baltimore, MD), on brief, for appellant/cross-appellee.

Mark A. Grannis (Jacinda A. Lanum of Wiltshire & Grannis LLP, Washington, DC; John A. Rego of Anderson & Quinn, LLC, Rockville, MD), on brief, for appellees/cross-appellants.

Argued before BELL, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, ADKINS, BARBERA and ALAN M. WILNER (Retired, Specially Assigned), JJ.

GREENE, J.

The Libertarian Party and the Green Party (collectively, Appellees) are political organizations within the State of Maryland. The Maryland State Board of Elections (Appellant) is an agency of the State of Maryland located in Anne Arundel County. Pursuant to Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 4–102 of the Election Law Article,¹ Appellees qualified as new political parties and gained ballot access privileges by filing petitionswith Appellant and by adopting interim constitutions and bylaws in accordance with the statute. Appellees, as political parties, enjoyed ballot access privileges from January 2007 until December 2010 when they were unable to show that their respective memberships consisted of at least 1% of registered Maryland voters or that their nominees for Governor of Maryland received at least 1% of the total vote.² In accordance with § 4–102, Appellees then undertook to obtain the required 10,000 petition signatures necessary to regain their ballot access privileges.³ Upon review of the submitted petitions, and the signatures contained therein, Appellant determined that Appellees did not satisfy the statutory requirements. Specifically, Appellant determined that many of the submitted petition signatures were invalid under Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 6–203 of the Election Law Article, as interpreted by this Court in Montgomery Cnty. Volunteer Fire–Rescue Ass'n v. Montgomery Cnty. Bd. of Elections, 418 Md. 463, 15 A.3d 798 (2011) [hereinafter Fire–Rescue ].

As a result, Appellees filed a Complaint in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County seeking a declaratory judgment that Appellant incorrectly applied the law regarding validation of petition signatures and that the applicable law was whether there was “sufficient cumulative information,” a phrase appearing in Fire–Rescue, from which Appellant could identify a signatory on a petition as a registered voter. Appellees subsequently filed a Motion for Summary Judgment, along with a Stipulation of Facts Not in Dispute signed by counsel for all parties. Appellant then filed a Cross–Motion for Summary Judgment. The trial judge granted Appellees' Motion for Summary Judgment, reasoning that the overriding consideration for Appellant to use in validating a petition signature is whether the identity of the signer can be verified. In his Order, the trial judge adopted Appellees' suggested “sufficient cumulative information” standard and declared that: the sufficient cumulative information standard forbids invalidating a petition entry merely because a signer omits an unused first or middle name; the sufficient cumulative information standard forbids invalidating a petition entry for name-related defects if, through other information contained in the entry, the signer's identity can be corroborated; and no signature should be considered a duplicate unless a signature from the same voter has been previously validated.

Appellant noted an appeal to the Court of Special Appeals and Appellees noted a cross-appeal; prior to any proceedings in the intermediate appellate court, this Court issued a writ of certiorari to consider both the appeal and the cross-appeal. Md. Bd. of Elections v. Libertarian Party, 422 Md. 353, 30 A.3d 193 (2011). The following questions are posed by Appellant:

1. Do [the Maryland State Board of Elections's] current standards for reviewing and validating petition signatures, as revised to reflect this Court's recent ruling in Fire–Rescue, appropriately implement the requirements of Section 6–203 of the Election Law Article (“EL”) of the Annotated Code of Maryland as interpreted in Fire–Rescue?

2. Does the signature validation standard articulated in Fire–Rescue apply uniformly to validation of petition signatures both in the referendum context, and in other contexts including new party petitions?

3. Does the [Maryland State Board of Elections] appropriately refuse to validate duplicate or multiple signatures of persons who already have signed a petition?

Appellees present the following additional question for this Court to address:

Did the Circuit Court err in holding that the “sufficient cumulative information” standard permits the invalidation of a signature on a ballot access petition by a person the [Maryland] State Board [of Elections] has identified as a registered voter, merely because the signer uses a nickname?

We shall hold that this Court's interpretation in Doe v. Montgomery Cnty. Bd. of Elections, 406 Md. 697, 962 A.2d 342 (2008), of the mandatory signature requirements of § 6–203(a) was affirmed in Fire–Rescue. The trial court and Appellees misconstrue the reasoning of Fire–Rescue in concluding that the “sufficient cumulative information” language established a new standard to utilize in petition signature validation; rather, this Court has consistently held that the requirements for petition signatures under § 6–203(a) are mandatory. We, therefore, reject any arguments made by Appellees in reliance on a supposed “sufficient cumulative information” standard. Furthermore, we hold that the petition signature validation requirements provided in § 6–203 of the Election Law Article apply to petitions in both the referendum context and in the context of new party petitions. To the extent that Appellees raise constitutional claims related to this issue, we decline to address those claims for reasons discussed more fully below. Lastly, we hold that, in accordance with the plain and unambiguous language of § 6–203(b), Appellant appropriately refused to validate and count duplicate signatures of individuals who previously signed the same petition.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 4–102 of the Election Law Article provides that any group of registered voters may form a new political party by filing a petition with the State Board of Elections and adopting and filing an interim constitution and bylaws. In accordance with Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 4–103 of the Election Law Article, “a new political party shall retain its status as a political party until December 31 in the year of the second statewide general election following the party's qualification under § 4–102,” unless the political party status is extended by fulfilling either of two conditions. The first condition is nominating a candidate for the highest office on a ballot in a statewide general election and obtaining at least 1% of the total vote for that office in favor of the nominated candidate. See Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 4–103(a)(2)(i) of the Election Law Article. The second condition is affiliation of at least 1 % of the State's registered voters with the political party. See Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 4–103(a)(2)(ii) of the Election Law Article. If a political party is unable to satisfy either of those conditions, it may re-apply for status as a new political party by once again filing with the State Board of Elections a petition, satisfying the necessary statutory requirements, as well as an interim constitution and bylaws. See Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 4–103(c) of the Election Law Article. Section 4–102(b) lists the requirements for the petition:

(1) The petition shall state:

(i) the partisan organization's intent to organize a State political party;

(ii) the name of the partisan organization;

(iii) the name and signature of the State chairman of the partisan organization; and

(iv) the names and addresses of 25 registered voters, including the State chairman, who shall be designated as constituting the initial governing body of the partisan organization.

(2)(i) Appended to the petition shall be papers bearing the signatures of at least 10,000 registered voters who are eligible to vote in the State as of the first day of the month in which the petition is submitted.

(ii) Signatures on the petition must have been affixed to the petition not more than 2 years before the filing date of the last qualifying signature.

Appellees fulfilled the requirements to become new political parties from January 2007 until December 2010; after December 2010, however, they no longer satisfied the conditions under § 4–103(a)(2)(i) or (ii) to retain their statuses as political parties, as explained herein. Appellees then sought to regain their political party statusesby each collecting 10,000 petition signatures of registered voters in the State of Maryland, as required under § 4–102(b)(2)(i). On March 7, 2011, Appellees submitted, and Appellant accepted, a petition on behalf of the Libertarian Party that purported to contain 13,787 signatures, as well as a petition on behalf of the Green Party that purported to contain 14,842 signatures. On March 16, 2011, Appellees submitted, and Appellant accepted, additional petition pages on behalf of the Libertarian Party that purported to contain an additional 1,068 signatures.

Title 6 of the Election Law Article provides a two-step process, involving validation and verification, for counting signatures on a petition. The signature validation procedure is outlined in Md.Code (2002, 2010 Repl.Vol.), § 6–203(a) of the Election Law Article:

(a) In general.—To sign a petition, an individual shall:

(1) sign the individual's name as it appears on the statewide voter registration list or the individual's...