Americans have the right to petition the government and thus the right to sign any petition, according to the First Amendment.  But that right is infringed upon when signatures are deemed “invalid” because they don’t match the signatures on the Maryland voter registration lists.  A middle name or initial missing from the petition signature means that signature will be discarded by the Montgomery County Board of Elections.

A petition by the county’s Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association intended to put the question of whether there should be a fee for taking an ambulance on the November election ballots so that the citizens it would affect could vote on the matter.

About 57 percent of the collected signatures were invalidated immediately for not being perfect matches to their counterparts on the voter registration lists, according to an Aug. 24 Washington Post article. The refusal of the Board to validate these signatures is consistent with the fraud-reduction 2008 court case Jane Doe v. Montgomery County Board of Elections, which states that a voter must sign his or her name on the petition exactly as it appears on the statewide voter registration lists in order for the signature to be considered valid.

As a result, the petition didn’t have the requisite 28,387 signatures needed by the Aug. 4 deadline for the issue to become a ballot initiative.  With over half the petition signatures discarded, the controversial issue of ambulance fees won’t be voted on in November.

In order to avoid a repetition of this situation in the future, the Montgomery County Board of Elections should make it their responsibility to inform voters of their signatures as they appear on the state voter registration list.  Voters often don’t recall exactly how they signed their voter registration documents, especially whether or not they originally included or excluded their middle names. With voters made aware of their “valid signature,” they become fully capable of signing a petition without conflict.

Informing voters of their “valid signatures” is as simple as sending letters to homes with a copy of the signature used for the voter registration lists.  If using the postal system poses too high a risk with the possibility that the mail never reaches the intended voter, then the Board can utilize the many available forms of communication available today; it’s not a tedious task for the Board to type a letter, pick up the phone, send an email or create a website.

The issue of ambulance fees was both controversial and one that deserved to be put on the ballot for a countywide decision.  Unfortunately, the lack of communication between the Board and the voters as to proper petition signage prevented this pressing issue from being voted upon.