The Montgomery County Board of Elections approved about three-quarters of the signatures submitted by the Committee for a Better Government in its quest to place a question on this November’s ballot seeking to limit the county executive position to two terms.
A total of 9,374 ballots were validated. 10,000 validated signatures are required before a question can go on the ballot. The deadline to submit those ballots is July 29.
Committee Chair Reardon Sullivan, in an email to MCM, said his group will be submitting 6,800 more signatures next week.
On June 18, the county Charter Review Commission reported to councilmembers that restricting the term limit for county executive to two terms would not be appropriate as the voters already have the right to vote the executive out.
Charter Commission Chair Jim Michaels said he would suggest changing the current three-term limit to read a total of three terms. That would deny an executive from running again after a break in terms.
Councilmember Natali Fani-Gonzalez called it “so wrong” to limit the terms for an executive.
Evan Glass called the 10,000-signature requirement to get a question on the ballot too low but added that only state officials can change that.
In the 2022 gubernatorial election, there were 343,000 voters, which means that only about 3% of voters are needed to get a question on the ballot. If the total number of registered voters is considered, that percentage drops even further. There are 687.000 registered voters.
Councilmember Gabe Albornoz suggested that councilmembers lobby state officials to increase the number of signatures needed to get a question on the ballot.
During their upcoming July 9 meeting, councilmembers plan to introduce their own resolution concerning the addition of a charter change concerning term limits. A public hearing on this proposal will be hold July 16 at 1:30 p.m.
Sullivan said that his group started a marketing campaign to try and stop the council from adopting a competing ballot question.
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