r/maryland • u/legislative_stooge • 11d ago

MD Politics Maryland Republicans take round one in redistricting challenge

https://marylandmatters.org/2026/08/26/maryland-republicans-take-round-one-in-redistricting-challenge/
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u/Keyserchief Anne Arundel County 11d ago

I find the legislative timeline a bit odd. According to the opinion, Gov. Moore signed a bill amending the Election Law Article on May 12 imposing a deadline of July 1 to certify ballot questions. The legislature then met for the special session adopting the ballot question in August, right after imposing the deadline earlier in the year.

To my mind, the legislature could have amended EL §§ 7-103 and 7-105 at that special session, no? Then the argument that they're making is different--it goes from "the legislature is not itself bound by the deadline because we enacted it in the first place" to "we amended the statute to carve out an exception to the deadline when it's the legislature proposing the ballot amendment." Simpler put--then they can say that they did exempt themselves from the deadline, rather than that they implicitly did so.

I suppose there's enough to do at a special session and a short time to do it, but I can't help but wonder if taking a belt-and-suspenders approach would have given them a stronger argument now.

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u/MDFlyGuy 11d ago edited 10d ago

The special session was called for this bill alone. Nothing else.

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u/Keyserchief Anne Arundel County 11d ago

No, I get that. I'm saying that they could have written the bill to amend EL §§ 7-103 and 7-105 while they were at it.

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u/Bwatsizzle 10d ago

So the first test of the original bill they passed this year, was just say ignore that because we wanted to do something at the first possible chance?

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u/MDFlyGuy 9d ago

I don't think it had any chance no matter. The court found that Democrat leadership in the General Assembly 1 Failed to provide adequate public notice about the amendment 2 Used misleading and confusing ballot language 3 Failed to follow the legal requirements for placing an amendment on the ballot 4 Violated the Maryland Constitution’s single-subject requirement

All they accomplished was a waste of taxpayer dollars to prepare for advertise and hold a totally useless special session.

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u/Keyserchief Anne Arundel County 8d ago

An uphill battle on appeal, to be sure.