A citizen’s group seeking term limits for the county executive in Montgomery County, Maryland, has submitted more than 20,000 petition signatures — more than twice as many as needed to place the question on the November ballot.
Only 10,000 signatures were needed for the question to be placed on the ballot, and the Committee for Better Government turned in 12,130 signatures in June. Earlier this month, the Montgomery County Board of Elections validated 9,374 of those signatures, with the time period remaining open for the group to come up with 626 signatures to reach the threshold for a ballot question. The group submitted another 7,995 signatures on Friday.
The petition is to amend the county charter to bar any county executive from serving more than two terms.
Reardon Sullivan, the chairman of the Committee for Better Government, said he wants to see term limits on the ballot because “it’s the right thing to do — it’s what I would consider to be good governance for the county.” He called it a way to hold elected officials “accountable.”
“If someone has three terms, think about that,” he said. “That’s 12 years, and that’s the time it would take a kid to go from first grade through 12th grade. That’s a long time.”
Sullivan said the group’s volunteers collected the signatures in places like parking lots, outside stores and churches.
The majority of signatures so far come from Democrats, which Sullivan said “makes sense, because there’s so many Democrats in Montgomery County.”
“What it demonstrates is that the voters are on board with the idea of limiting our politicians to two terms,” Sullivan said.
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