Montgomery County voters casting ballots for the Nov. 5 presidential election are asked to decide whether the county executive should be limited to serving a total of two consecutive terms. The current term limit is three consecutive four-year terms, or 12 years. If the referendum passes, the county charter would be amended to reflect the term-limit change.
Here are five things to know about the referendum on voters’ ballots:
1. The referendum appears on the ballot in the following wording:
“Amend Section 202 of the County Charter to decrease the term limit that applies to the County Executive from the current three consecutive terms to two consecutive terms. The decreased limit would apply to anyone who has already served two consecutive terms as of December 2026.” A “yes” vote indicates your support for the amendment, and a “no” vote indicates your opposition.
2. The initiative calling for a referendum on a two-term limit is sponsored by the Committee for Better Government, which is led by former Montgomery County Republican party chair and unsuccessful 2022 GOP county executive nominee Reardon Sullivan. The committee submitted a petition to the Montgomery County Board of Elections to request that the referendum be placed on the ballot. The petition needed to meet a threshold of 10,000 valid signatures from registered county voters. The county elections board validated 15,956 petition signatures in support of putting the referendum on the ballot.
3. If the referendum is successful, it will affect County Executive Marc Elrich (D), who would no longer be able to run for re-election. He is currently serving the second year of his second four-year term and has said he plans to run for a third term. Elrich is critical of the initiative, calling it a ploy to remove him from office while Sullivan argues it is not directed at Elrich, who defeated him at the polls in 2022. Sullivan says it would align term-limits with those applied to the governor and president.
4. The County Council unanimously approved the wording of the referendum in order for it to appear on the ballot. However, councilmembers say they are opposed to the petition process that allowed the referendum to proceed. Councilmember Evan Glass (D-At-large) wrote a letter in July, co-signed by all 11 council members, to the Maryland General Assembly asking the legislature to consider changing the requirements for future citizen-led ballot initiatives to qualify to appear on the ballot. Their main criticism is that 10,000 signatures is too low of a threshold in a county the size of Montgomery, with a population of 1 million residents and over 600,000 registered voters.
5. The county’s Charter Review Commission opposes the referendum. In its recommendations presented to the council in July, the commission recommended as an alternative that the charter be changed to limit a county executive to serving a total of three terms throughout the executive’s lifetime. Currently, a county executive could technically be elected to serve more than three terms, as long as an additional term is not consecutive with the first three. However, that proposal was not approved by the council.
