Please help get the approximately 50,000 signatures of registered Maryland voters needed to force referendum on the new in-state tuition law. Before this year's legislative session, social conservatives were told by GOP leaders to keep quiet about devisive social issues, because the legislature needed to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs. I didn't notice the Democrats lighten up on their rush to redefine our society, however. One of the bills that was passed this year by our state legislature provides that students who are here ilegally are nonetheless eligible for in-state tuition rates at our public colleges and universities.
Here in Maryland, any new law passed by legislative bodies can be put to referendum if enough voters in the jurisdiction sign petition to do so. There's a time limit on submitting the petition. We need 56,000 valid signatures submitted by the last day of June, with at least 19,000 of them submitted by last day of May.
The requirements for this type of petition are a bit different than the petitioning we've been doing to get Maryland Independent Party recognized by the state. Our party petition can be easily printed on a single side of a piece of paper. The referendum petition requires double-sided printing, so that each signature sheet has the text of the bill being challenged.
I encourage all Marylanders to help this petition drive. And it presents a great opportunity to get your AIP precinct caucus started up, too, where you can pass around signature sheets for the referendum petition as well as the Maryland Independent Party petition (we need only 10,000 signatures for that one).
The organizers of the referendum petition have clearly put a lot of thought into how to succeed. They plan to have a web-based system in place by Tuesday to make it easy for families to ensure that their signatures will be considered valid, by using voter registration database to print out a signature sheet with the names exactly as registered. Many signatures have been disallowed in recent years because of failure of signer to provide name exactly matching the registered name (if you are registered as John C. Smith, for example, it's not considered valid if you write John Smith or John Christopher Smith).
The referendum petition website has petition forms for download and much more information, including talking points about why the new law is objectionable. http://www.mdpetitions.com
The petition form for getting Maryland Independent Party recognized is available at http://www.MarylandIndependentParty.org
Thanks to Delegate Neil Parrott of Washington County for organizing the petition drive. Thanks also to Delegate Pat McDonough of Baltimore County for his leadership on this referendum. And a special thanks to the folks at Help Save Maryland for publicizing the petition drive as part of their excellent continuing efforts.
-----
Steve Schulin
volunteer - Rockville, Maryland
http://www.MarylandIndependentParty.org
if-you-dont-see-a-leader-be-a-leader@marylandindependentparty.org
No comments:
Post a Comment