Interesting petition facts

As many of you should know, the effort to stop the ill-considered SB176, better known as the in-state tuition for illegal immigrants bill, has been a fairly resounding success so far - over 58,000 petition signatures were turned in by the May 31 progress deadline when only around 18,000 were needed. Proponents of illegal immigrants are already threatening legal action to allow the law to take effect.

But thanks to the advocacy group Help Save Maryland, here are some interesting petition facts:

• The top five jurisdictions for signing are Baltimore County with 14,307, Anne Arundel County with 8,586, Harford County with 5,922, Carroll County with 5,820, and Washington County with 3,310.

• The county with the largest number of registered voters is Montgomery County, but unsurprisingly the liberal bastion has contributed just 2,301 signatures to the effort.

• Locally among Lower Shore counties Dorchester leads with 587 collected, with Wicomico County second at 383, Worcester at 305, and Somerset the lowest in the state with just 50. But on the Eastern Shore we are pikers - Cecil checks in with 1,830, Talbot has 1,218, Caroline has 1,164, Queen Anne's has 1,114, and even little Kent County has 435. Clearly we have some work to do!

• According to petition drive leader Delegate Neil Parrott, "(P)lease note that over 25% of the signatures have come from Democrats, 15% from Unaffiliated voters, and the remainder from Republicans and 3rd party voters." So it's not just a Republican issue.

Between the Lower Shore counties there are 121,281 registered voters - at least that was the last report. We have signed up barely 1% of the voters in a conservative area where we should get AT LEAST 10 to 15 percent. If we hit the 10% threshold here, that would be about 20 percent of the total needed for the state.

It's time to get to work.