On November 13, a lower state court in Howard County, Maryland, heard oral arguments in Norman v Howard County, 13C-09-76855. Here is a newspaper story about that hearing. The issue is whether petition signatures must match exactly the name of the voter in voter registration records. The judge said it might take a while for him to issue an opinion, which implies that he takes it very seriously and that the outcome isn’t easy to predict. Last year the highest state court in Maryland had seemed to rule that signatures are invalid unless they match the record exactly, as to middle initials, middle names, and abbreviations.