Proponents of an attempt to overturn a law granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants have done what some observers predicted to be near impossible three months ago.

Petition drive organizers, led by Republican lawmakers, have gathered more than 100,000 valid signatures on their petition for referendum, which is expected to be certified by the state Board of Elections today, potentially marking the first such effort to reach the ballot in Maryland in a generation.

They did so with a miniscule budget, two months in which to collect signatures, and by relying on a crop of volunteers.

Though their largely online campaign has overcome predictions of defeat, the chairman for mdpetitions.com, Del. Neil C. Parrott, said the group cannot rest on its success because he expects the law’s supporters to mount legal challenges to the validity of the signatures.

“Our job right now is to make sure that every single person who has signed that petition has their signature counted,” said Parrott (R-Dist. 2B) of Hagerstown.

Parrott had to supply more than 55,000 valid signatures to the elections board by the end of June to have the law considered for placement on the ballot in the 2012 General Election. No statewide petition endeavor has been so successful since voters upheld an abortion law in 1992.

“This issue, we believe, sells itself,” Parrott said. “It’s just common sense that we wouldn’t give [in-state] tuition to illegal immigrants.”

This spring, Maryland became the 11th state to offer in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. However, because of the successful petition, the law did not go into effect July 1 as scheduled.

The law is designed to allow undocumented students who have attended Maryland high schools for at least three years and whose families can show proof of having paid state taxes to pay in-state tuition rates at a community college.

After completing 60 credit hours equal to two years of full-time study, a student could transfer to a four-year college or university in Maryland and continue to pay the reduced rate.

Opponents of the law began circulating their petition in May.

The surprising ease with which organizers collected names probably won’t pave the way for future referendum efforts, said Todd Eberly, a political science professor at Saint Mary’s College of Maryland.

Aside from a referendum that is expected should the legislature pass a bill allowing gay marriage next year, Marylanders shouldn’t expect a slew of successful petition efforts, Eberly said.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if the General Assembly didn’t find some way to make it even more difficult to move forward,” he said. “No legislature likes to have itself overturned.”

Legal challenges

Casa of Maryland, an immigrants’ rights group, takes issue with Parrott’s use of a website linked with voter registration data that allowed voters to download from the site the information that must accompany their signature, creating less room for error.

Joseph E. Sandler, an attorney for Casa, said his group likely will file a challenge to the signatures and the way in which they were collected. Groups that want to challenge the board’s certification must do so by Aug. 2.

Progressive Maryland, a liberal advocacy organization, has joined with Casa and faith groups who want to make sure that voters don’t overturn the law if it makes it to the ballot in 2012.

Petition collectors have misled voters about the conditions under which illegal students can receive the tuition break, said Charly Carter, a consultant for Progressive Maryland.

She points out that the law requires families to pay three years worth of income tax to qualify for the in-state rate and that students who receive discounted tuition begin the process of becoming legal citizens.

Nationally, allegations of petition fraud carry little weight, said Brandon Holmes, director of policy and advocacy, for the Citizens in Charge Foundation, a Virginia-based advocacy group that backs voters rights in the referendum process.

“We found in our research that there’s not a whole lot (of fraud) that goes on,” Holmes said. “It’s a word that people like to throw around because it is powerful against your political enemies.”

While Parrott’s grassroots effort raised $6,700 — compared to the $250,000 usually recommended by referendum experts — mdpetitions.com will need to generate more money to keep the issue in front of voters until the 2012 election, as well as pay potential legal costs.

“We have a very high validation rate, 80 percent. And that needs to stay,” Parrott said. “...People, they wanted to have a signature on there. They wanted to have a vote in 2012.”

sbreitenbach@gazette.net