On Saturday April 5, the Maryland Forward Party delivered an open letter to the office of Governor Moore requesting a veto. The Party didn’t take this action lightly. Where possible, we believe it's important to resolve competing ideas in a collaborative environment, where all opinions are heard and considered. This is fundamental to the Forward Party; a new and rapidly growing national political party that is rooted in bottom-up collaborative problem solving, regardless of traditional partisan stance. Maryland Forward Party had previously submitted opposition testimony for both the House and Senate companion bills and yesterday issued a letter to The Office of State Attorney General Brown's office, for their interpretation of the bill language.
House Bill (HB) 41 / Senate Bill (SB) 267 is a piece of legislation that recently passed both chambers in the Maryland General Assembly. This bill was sponsored by House Ways & Means Chair, Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard), and Senate Education, Energy and the Environment Chair, Senator Brian Feldman (D-Montgomery) by request of the State Board of Elections. The stated intent of this legislation is:
“Altering the time periods during which a petition for the formation of a new political party or additional signatures to a petition may not be filed; and prohibiting signatures submitted with a petition that was officially determined as not meeting certain legal requirements from being resubmitted with a subsequent petition.”
Current Practices
In Maryland “minor” political parties (any party that is not either the Democratic or Republican Party) are required to gain official recognition and ballot access by collecting at least 10,000 handwritten and verified petition signatures. Then to maintain that status, those political parties are required every 4 years, following either the Presidential or Gubernatorial election, to show their relevance by maintaining approximately 30,000 registered voters or by running a Gubernatorial or Presidential candidate and gaining approximately 25,000 votes for that candidate.
As of now, existing Maryland State Election Law, allows up to 2 submissions for your initial signature petition. Should an applicant fall short of the required 10,000 signatures in the first submission, they are permitted to file a second submission to make up the remainder. Separately, there is also a 2-year running clock on all eligible signatures, starting from when you collect your first signature. Since Maryland law currently mandates handwritten signatures, the recount for the second submission can become a heavy workload burden on the Board of Elections. They need to hand process all of the initially verified signatures from the first submission, but confirming that those signatures did not lapse their 2-year max clock in the meantime. This physical signature mandate requires this to be counted and verified a second time, all by hand. This is understandably a legitimate concern. The Board of Elections has a fixed annual budget and limited personnel on staff. They are also mandated to complete the verification process within a fixed timeline. To essentially require them to re-verify all 10,000 signatures twice, is an inefficient process and not the best use of government resources.
The Wrong Solution
The current proposed solution, per HB 41 / SB 267, is to easily disqualify all of the initially verified signatures from the first petition, and start from scratch on the second submission, should any minor clerical error occur. To be clear, a minor clerical error such as an illegible signature or address, or a missed input box on one of the required 2,000 signature forms, could legally disqualify as many as 9,999 verified Maryland voter signatures.
The Maryland Forward Party does have a reasonable understanding and honest appreciation for this legitimate concern, which the Board has identified. Limited employee resources, conducting high-intensity manual review and verification, within a limited window of time. This is a problem that needs to be addressed. This current condition is not fair to the Board of Elections staff nor to Maryland voters and solutions should be explored. However this proposed solution, HB 41 / SB 267, does not seem to fix the problem and would only make other problems potentially worse, by unintentional means. Should 9,999 signatures from a first submission be disqualified from a second submission, the Board of Elections staff still needs to count and verify at least 10,000 new signatures in the second submission. Discarding the first round of Maryland signatures, potentially for a simple clerical error, would not improve this workload and review procedural problems that this bill is trying to address. HB 41 / SB 267 is not proposing a better use of staff time nor finding a more efficient process by which to count, review and verify signatures. Perhaps without surprise, this legislation also provides no associated cost savings either. The Department of Legislative Services Fiscal Note for the bill indicates no State or Local fiscal impact.
By contrast this bill could make other problems worse. In Maryland we have existing processes and structures in place that limit a free and fair democracy. By Maryland state law, Maryland, along with Kentucky, Oklahoma, Florida and 7 other states have closed primaries. This means that over 20% of Maryland voters are not permitted to participate in statewide primary elections. According to a 2024 Gallup poll 43% of Americans consider themselves Independent, compared to the 28% identifying as Republicans and the 28% identifying as Democrats. 20% of Maryland voters equates to just shy of 1 million Maryland residents and it is quite possible that many more identify as Independent but maintain registration with 1 of the 2 major parties, in order to not lose primary voting rights. The Primary Election in Maryland is a publicly funded election. Paid for by Maryland taxes. This means that nearly 1 million Maryland taxpayers are not permitted to participate in this publicly funded election. Beyond our closed primary elections, Maryland’s reputation is dinged furthermore as one of the top five worst gerrymandered states in the United States. By some opinions, only North Carolina is worse. Closed primary elections and political gerrymandering limit the voting rights of Maryland voters and extend a systemic problem of politicians choosing their constituents, and not the reverse. HB 41 / SB 267, by unintentional design, has the potential to worsen these problems and further limit the political voice of many Marylanders, perhaps even a growing majority.
Potential Alternative Solutions
There are potential alternative solutions that could be considered. Funding could be allocated in defense of strengthening our democracy; to sufficiently fund the State Board of Elections and to hire the right-sized staff to effectively review and verify petition ballots. There could also be a review of the processes and procedures during the verification process. Perhaps signature pages can be flagged and categorized, as part of the initial submission review, to identify any signature dates that could potentially fall outside of the 2-year window of a second submission. This would be set by the predetermined deadline for the second submission. The language of the bill could also be revised, per specific Maryland Election Law definitions, to allow for entire “pages” (each containing up to 5 signatures) to be disqualified and not entire “petitions”. This would better align with the initial intent from the Board of Elections.
Yet another possible solution would be a modernization of how we collect, verify and store our signatures for petitions. During the 2020 Covid pandemic the State Board of Elections recognized that the pandemic “inhibite(d) the collection of signatures required for a petition, to gain access to or place a question on the ballot, and then “authorize(d) the extended use of electronic signatures to facilitate signature-gathering.” State Board of Elections Policy 2021-01 then extended the temporary use of electronic signature acceptance and allowed candidates and ballot questions from these signatures to be placed on the November 8, 2022 Gubernatorial General Election. In 2023, Maryland switched back from a fully functioning, safe and reliable electronic signatures procedure and returned to a mandatory physical signature requirement for petitions. In 2023 Delegates Sheila Ruth (D-Baltimore) & Samuel Rosenberg (D-Baltimore City) co-sponsored a bill to return us to electronic signatures. This bill was not approved in the House and died that legislative cycle. In 2024, Delegates Ruth & Rosenber co-sponsored similar legislation, HB 1109, along with 9 fellow Democratic delegates. Again it died in the House Ways & Means Committee under Committee Chair Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary (D-Howard) and Election Law Subcommittee Chair Jheanelle Wilkens (D-Montgomery). Finally this past 2025 State Legislative Session, which ended earlier this week, produced a similar piece of draft legislation HB 642 - Election Law - Registered Voter List and Petitions (Ballot Petition Modernization Act). This bill was now co-sponsored by 14 Democratic delegates, and yet accordinging to the General Assembly website, this bill was never held to a vote in the House Ways & Means committee. Electronic petition signatures have already served us well in the past and worked well, including through a statewide Gubernatorial election. Electronic signatures would help track, categorize, sort, verify and store petition signatures and should help to resolve the Board of Elections’ workload concerns with second submissions, and yet, even when submitted for legislation, multiple years in a row, this potential solution has yet to make it out from the House Ways & Means Committee. There is something strange and irrational about this logic, but that topic is for another day.
Conclusions
The point is, given more time to collaborate with the State Board of Elections, we could likely produce a solution that would actually address the stated problem from the Board and also not open Maryland’s democracy to unnecessary risk. The current language in this bill will legally allow individuals to easily target, inhibit and possibly block second petition submissions from political parties. By weaponizing this language and potentially throwing out thousands of previously verified signatures, we dishonor our fellow Maryland voters and may begin to question who is standing up for voter rights and Maryland’s democracy.
A veto from the Governor’s office will help to provide this additional time, which is needed to get this right. To work with the Board of Elections, to identify and prioritize their concerns and to then target common sense solutions that actually solve their problem, without unintentionally making another problem worse.
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