By Adam Pagnucco.
The Democratic Party is a diverse organization in many, many ways but one of its core beliefs is support for free and fair elections. Indeed, one can make a case that all other civil rights – both in their establishment and their enforcement – are linked to voting rights. So when a member of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) proposed that the committee should support the right of voters to fill state legislative vacancies, it should not have been controversial.
But it was. And now we should ask whether some of these Democrats believe in democracy.
At last night’s central committee meeting, MCDCC member and former Takoma Park City Council Member Seth Grimes proposed that the committee adopt the following position:
The Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee supports special elections as the most Democratic method to fill Maryland General Assembly vacancies that occur during the four-year legislative term.
This is a departure from the current system established in Maryland’s constitution that empowers county political parties to fill General Assembly vacancies. In Montgomery County, MCDCC mostly picks its own members to fill vacant positions in the House of Delegates. Grimes believes voters should make these decisions and asked the central committee to agree.
Consider the following data points.
1. Maryland voters have a long history of approving special elections for vacancies all over the state. One of the more recent examples includes a 2016 constitutional amendment providing for special elections in some cases for vacancies in the offices of comptroller and attorney general. That amendment was approved by 73% of the state’s voters and 75% of voters in Montgomery County.
2. Virginia uses special elections to fill General Assembly vacancies and thousands of voters vote in them. Virginia had three of them yesterday and at this writing, the number of votes cast were 38,512 in Senate District 7, 9,950 in House District 24 and 10,876 in House District 35.
3. There have been three special elections for vacancies on the Montgomery County Council. Here are the number of votes cast in each of those elections.
District 1 special primary, 2000: 42,898
District 1 special general, 2000: 23,950
District 4 special primary, 2008: 9,577
District 4 special general, 2008: 9,247
District 4 special primary, 2009: 10,854
District 4 special general, 2009: 12,090
4. For those who are concerned about diversity, the 2009 special election was won by Nancy Navarro, who defeated a self-funding delegate and would go on to write the county’s racial equity law.
MCDCC should have adopted Grimes’s proposal on the spot since it is consistent with both the principle of voting rights and repeated votes by Montgomery County voters in favor of special elections. Instead, the central committee voted to send it to its issues committee, which may be marginally better than outright killing it. My sources disagree on the exact tally and there is no recording from which to verify it immediately, but the vote was close. At least ten central committee members voted against considering special elections.
In declining to support elections, MCDCC ignored its own precedent of supporting limited special elections in 2018. On the issue of voting rights, the central committee has actually regressed.
On one level, it’s understandable that some MCDCC members are sensitive about special elections because they would deprive them of their longstanding practice of appointing themselves to office. What’s not understandable is how people who don’t favor elections could call themselves Democrats.