Law and Government
| Year | Republican | Democratic |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 27.4% 113,041 | 70.6% 291,846 |
| 2008 | 27.1% 118,608 | 71.5% 314,444 |
| 2004 | 32.8% 136,334 | 65.9% 273,936 |
| 2000 | 33.5% 124,580 | 62.5% 232,453 |
| 1996 | 35.2% 117,730 | 59.4% 198,807 |
| 1992 | 33.0% 62,955 | 55.1% 168,691 |
| 1988 | 48.1% 154,191 | 51.5% 165,187 |
| 1984 | 50.1% 146,924 | 49.7%' 146,036 |
| 1980 | 47.2% 125,515 | 39.8%' 105,822 |
Montgomery County was granted a charter form of government in 1948.
The present County Executive/County Council form of government of Montgomery County dates to November 1968 when the voters changed the form of government from a County Commission/County Manager system, as provided in the original 1948 home rule Charter.
The county began with a county commissioner system that kept most of the power in Annapolis. In 1948 voters approved a "Council-Manager" form of government, making Montgomery County the first home-rule county in Maryland. The first six-member council was elected in 1949. Then in 1968, the voters approved a "County Executive-Council" form of government. That change formed an executive branch under the County Executive, and a legislative branch under a seven-member County Council. Instead of a County Manager, there was now a Chief Administrative Officer appointed by the County Executive. That went into effect in 1970, when the first seven-member County Council was elected. Originally all of the council members were elected at large (that is, by all of the voters). Five members were required to reside in their council district. In November 1986, the voters amended the Charter to increase the number of Council seats in the 1990 election from seven to nine. Now five members are elected by the voters of their council district and four are elected at-large. Each voter may vote for five council members; four at-large and one from the district in which they reside.
The Montgomery County Police Department provides county-wide law enforcement services.
Read more about this topic: Montgomery County, Maryland
Famous quotes containing the words law and, law and/or government:
“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)
“Laws can be wrong and laws can be cruel. And the people who live only by the law are both wrong and cruel.”
—Ardel Wray. Mark Robson. Thea (Ellen Drew)
“Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read and say and eat and drink and wear.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)