Petition drive hits six figures

Thanks to a number of hard-working and concerned Marylanders, the petition drive to overturn SB167 and deny illegal immigrants in-state tuition crossed the 100,000 signature barrier yesterday. With over 60,000 turned in by the initial May 31 deadline and around 47,000 ruled valid, bill supporters like CASA de Maryland, the ACLU, and other advocates for illegal immigrants will likely need a court ruling or some travesty of justice to prevent the referendum from occurring in November, 2012.

Maryland taxpayers already earned a one-month reprieve from the bill because the referendum had a chance of being held based on signatures already collected.

Still, there's a long way to go in defeating this ill-considered bill. Look for a protracted court battle over the prefilled forms (which could eventually enable many more laws to go to referendum if a challenge to this method is denied) and sometime next year I'm sure we'll get the push polling to make it appear public sentiment is against the bill. It's most likely that supporters of overturning the bill at the ballot box will be outspent many times over by proponents during next year's campaign season, and the fight will bring national interest.

This may be more than a sidebar to next year's Presidential election, and liberals don't like it when their authority is challenged. They tend to forget the people are supposed to have the power, not the government.