Maryland Senate passes voter protections; moves bill to the House

Katharine Wilson, The Baltimore Sun on Feb 10, 2026

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The Maryland State Senate passed a state voting rights law on Tuesday aimed at preventing minority voter suppression and dilution in local and county elections. The bill is now sent to the Maryland House of Delegates, which will also consider its own version of the bill.

The vote passed 30-15, with all Republicans voting against the bill and all but two Democrats voting to support it. Sen. Shaneka Henson of Anne Arundel County and Sen. Mary-Dulany James of Harford County were the two Democrats who voted against the bill. Henson, one of the Democrats who voted against the bill Tuesday, asked during a floor debate last week if jurisdictions could still create minority-majority districts to allow for local representation under this legislation, in which Sydnor said yes.

As of now, eight states have their own voting rights law — California, Washington, Oregon, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Colorado. The state Senate passed a version of the bill last year, but the bill died in a House committee.

The measure would prohibit a municipality or county from attempting to block a protected class from electing their candidate of choice or influencing a local election by diluting the group’s vote. Under the Senate bill, a protected class is a group of voters who are members of a race, color, or language minority group, or a class of two or more of those groups.

The Maryland attorney general, or others, could ask a court for damages or other relief under the policy.

The House version of the bill will be heard by the House Government, Labor, and Elections Committee on Wednesday. Senate bill sponsor Sen. Charles Sydnor, a Baltimore County Democrat, said the House “ran out of time” last session to pass the bill, but is more confident this year, given the several sponsors for the House version and that the bill is a priority of the Legislative Black Caucus.

Sydnor said the legislation is a response to several local instances of vote packing, including the district lines drawn by the Baltimore County Council, which was criticized for packing racial minority groups into districts. Sydnor said he was concerned that the state would have to wait for the federal government to help address the issue and that the state had limited ways to protect residents from vote packing.

“If you’re taking that larger majority of a community and putting them into one district, some people will look at and say ‘well, hey, you’re able to elect a Black person’, but when you have such a large percentage that you really don’t need, you’re diminishing the power in some of those other communities that could use the influence,” Sydnor said. “It may not be a majority, but there will be an influential power or voice to be listened to in those other districts. That’s how it harms.”

The bill is also meant as a response to what Sydnor and Joanne Antoine, the executive director of Common Cause Maryland, said are concerns about the gutting and diminishing of the federal Voting Rights Act.

The state and congressional districts, Antoine said, already have specific standards they use for determining districts and adhere to the federal voting law. The county and municipal levels, she said, are “where the problems truly exist.”

Antoine added that another county in question is St. Mary’s County, which uses at-large voting for all county positions — allowing residents to vote in all council districts, not just the districts where they live.

The Maryland Municipal League submitted testimony against Sydnor’s bill, arguing that it “undermines local control,” and could open up municipalities to costly lawsuits.

In a floor debate on Feb. 3, Sen. Chris West, a Republican from Carroll and Baltimore counties, asked Sydnor if the bill would require local jurisdictions to draw lines that stretch out to include enough minorities in a district. “You’re telling me that this bill does not require counties or municipalities to create amoeba-like districts in order to comply with the requirements of the bill, and to create a district with enough minorities in it to elect a minority representative to the county commissioners or the city council?” West said.

In response, Sydnor said that the bill does not require municipalities to redraw current lines, but if questioned in court, a redraw of the lines could be a possible legal remedy.

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