One Name

Maryland fills 188 General Assembly seats in November. On every ballot in the state, one candidate's name carries no party beside it — and it is on the…

This November, Maryland fills all 188 seats in the General Assembly. Across every ballot in the state, for every one of those seats, one name carries no party next to it. It is on the District 9A ballot, and it is mine. I'd rather that were not true. Not the part about me being on the ballot — the part about being the only one. What it took A candidate running with a party puts their name on the ballot by filing a one page certificate of candidacy with the State Board of Elections. That is the whole procedure. A candidate running without one has to petition. Maryland law prices ballot access at one percent of the district's registered voters, and every signature has to come from a registered voter who lives inside the district lines — lines that run from Ellicott City out through Woodbine and Mt. Airy and into Clarksburg and Damascus. Between April 19 and July 29, my neighbors signed — one at a time, in person, every one of them a registered voter living inside those lines. Each signature was checked against the voter file before we filed, and every page carried a sworn affidavit from the person who collected it. The State Board verified them and certified the petition on August 19. The ballot was certified on August 31. I'm not complaining about the work. I came to this country, built a business in Howard County, and raised three children here; I know what it is to earn a place. And I'd do it again, because the alternative was leaving 9A voters with a ballot on which every choice had been made in a primary most of them could not vote in. That is the actual problem, and it is not mine. It's yours. Who is locked out As of July, Maryland has 999,221 active voters registered with no party — 23 percent of the rolls, and about 17,000 behind the Republican Party statewide. In…