At its meeting last Monday night, the Greenbelt City Council introduced for first reading a resolution to amend the city charter by replacing the section on absentee voting with a section on mail-in voting. All Greenbelt voters have had the option to vote in city elections by using an absentee ballot, with no excuse required, since early in the last decade, but the “mail in” aspects never really caught on. With the onset of early voting, the number of residents voting as absentees plummeted.
During this pandemic year, however, Maryland and Prince George’s County used mail-in voting quite successfully and in the process exposed many voters to the advantages of its use. The city council and the city Board of Elections are hopeful that introducing a dedicated mail-in voting option will be an attractive alternative to voters and, most importantly, will serve to increase Greenbelt’s rather anemic levels of voter turnout for city elections.
While the proposed legislation would replace the absentee voting process with mail-in voting, the city’s other longstanding voting methods would remain in place, health concerns allowing. Those methods include in-person voting for both early voting and voting on election day at one’s precinct. And while mail ballots may indeed be mailed, other locations for drop-off will be available. It is expected that voters will have to apply to receive the ballot rather than receiving it automatically.
The changes would require additional legislation to complete the details and revise the city election code, but those would involve the usual simpler resolutions.
On the other hand, because the pending legislation is in the form of a charter amendment resolution, further steps are required. The city must notify the public by posting a copy of the charter amendment resolution in a public place for at least 40 days after its passage. It must also publish a “fair summary” of the resolution not less than four times at weekly intervals in a newspaper of general circulation in the community (watch this space!).
The amendment will become effective 50 days after being passed if it is not petitioned to referendum. City residents may, however, seek to nullify a charter amendment by acquiring the signatures of 20 percent of the qualified voters of the municipality, as well as meeting other requirements.
The charter amendment resolution should be introduced for its second reading and adoption at the council’s next regular meeting on Monday, April 26.
