“Stop the Spend” Ballot Initiative Could Fall Short as Signature Count Comes Down to Final Batch

The effort to put Montgomery County’s proposed “Stop the Spend” charter amendment before voters this November may come down to a relatively small number of signatures.

According to Bethesda Today reporter Lou Peck, the Montgomery County Board of Elections has validated 7,999 signatures from the first approximately 11,300 submitted by the Committee to Control Montgomery County Spending. The 11,300 number comes from previous Bethesda Today reporting.

The group needs 10,000 valid signatures to qualify its proposed charter amendment for the ballot.

That leaves the campaign 2,001 valid signatures short.

The committee submitted another 2,524 signatures by the July 27 deadline, according to Peck, meaning nearly four out of every five signatures in that final batch would need to be accepted for the measure to qualify.

And that is where the math gets interesting.

First Batch Had About a 71% Validation Rate

Of the roughly 11,300 signatures initially submitted, 7,999 were validated.

That works out to a validation rate of approximately 70.8%.

If the additional 2,524 signatures were validated at exactly the same rate, approximately 1,787 would be accepted.

That would bring the campaign to roughly 9,786 valid signatures, about 214 short of the required 10,000.

But that calculation should not be treated as a prediction.

There is no guarantee the second batch will validate at the same rate as the first. The later signatures could have been collected differently, reviewed more carefully before submission or simply contain a different mix of voters and potential errors.

What we can calculate is the threshold: at least 2,001 of the remaining 2,524 signatures, or approximately 79.3%, would need to be validated for the initiative to reach 10,000.

That is noticeably higher than the approximately 70.8% validation rate of the first batch, but close enough that the outcome remains uncertain.

Peck reported that the Board of Elections has until next week to review the additional signatures. His full update on the count can be read here.

How We Got Here

Bethesda Today reported on July 22 that organizers had submitted more than 11,000 signatures in their effort to place the charter amendment before voters.

The campaign then continued collecting signatures ahead of the final deadline. Bethesda Today reported on July 30 on the additional submission and the Board of Elections review.

The latest numbers now give a much clearer picture of just how close the petition effort could be.

What Would “Stop the Spend” Do?

The proposed charter amendment is intended to limit increases in Montgomery County’s operating budget by requiring a unanimous County Council vote to increase spending beyond the applicable inflation threshold.

Currently, seven councilmembers can approve spending above the limit. Under the proposed amendment, all 11 councilmembers would have to agree.

The proposal has generated significant political debate over both the policy itself and how the amendment should be presented to voters.

Ballot Wording Has Also Been Contested

There has also been contention over the wording that would be used to describe the proposed charter amendment to voters.

That debate could become moot for the 2026 election if the petition ultimately fails to reach the required 10,000 valid signatures.

For now, however, the initiative remains alive.

Based strictly on the validation rate of the first batch, the campaign would finish slightly short. But the final batch only needs to improve from approximately 70.8% valid to 79.3% valid to cross the threshold.

That makes this less a case of the initiative clearly failing and more one where a relatively small difference in the validity rate of the remaining signatures could determine whether “Stop the Spend” appears on Montgomery County ballots this fall.

---