ANNAPOLIS — With less than four minutes remaining in Maryland’s legislative session, House lawmakers erupted into a shouting match over a voting rights bill they were about to decide on.
Votes flashed across a screen. House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk’s voice cut through the chaos as she announced the bill had passed, 91-19. Applause spread through the chamber.
For months, lawmakers and activists pushed for the measure they said would better protect Maryland voters. The bill had faced fierce debate and appeared dead two weeks before the session’s end.
“My fingers were extra, extra crossed because I hoped that there would’ve been a happy ending,” said Imani Brooks, a policy counsel for the Legal Defense Fund who spent 14 hours on the steps of the State House on the final day. “I was very anxious and felt we were on the verge of something.”
Gov. Wes Moore has not yet signed the bill into law, but supporters said they believe he will.
The bill, the “Voting Rights Act of 2026 – Counties and Municipal Corporations,” was part of a voting rights package proposed by Democrats. The measure to combat vote dilution was the only one to clear the legislature, but advocates said it will be pivotal in the ongoing fight to protect voting rights.
“It expressly provides authority to the Attorney General to help resolve any type of discrimination happening at the local or municipal level in voting,” said Sen. Charles Sydnor III, D-Baltimore County, the bill’s sponsor. “What it also does is provide a state action, rather than us just relying on the federal Voting Rights Act, it essentially creates our own Voting Rights Act here in Maryland.”
The efforts in Maryland come as civil rights activists said the voting rights of minority groups are under attack by the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court is slated to rule on Louisiana v. Callais, which could decide whether majority-minority districts are unconstitutional race-based gerrymandering, potentially limiting the application of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Meanwhile, in Congress, the SAVE Act, which would require voters to provide multiple forms of ID that activists say protected groups are less likely to have, passed in the House and is stalled in the Senate.
“Every day, we are seeing and hearing about what the federal administration is thinking about in terms of suppressing the vote … and those are just signs that states must stand up for their voters,” Brooks said. “And they can, they have the legal authority to do so by passing state voting rights acts.”
Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, said efforts to safeguard elections through the Maryland Voting Rights Act began in 2022. Last year, the General Assembly approved one of its bills, which requires election officials to provide voting materials in other languages in certain communities.
“Unfortunately, in Maryland, we don’t proactively pass legislation knowing what’s coming,” Antoine said. “The bill was introduced knowing [what would happen] if Trump was elected … We have the blueprint. We were trying to get ahead of it. We should have passed this one or two years ago, if I’m honest.”
According to the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, at least 21 “anti-voter” bills have been introduced since the 2023 Maryland General Assembly session.
Sydnor’s work on the bill was inspired by the 2021 redistricting of Baltimore County, which he said intentionally packed Black citizens in one district to dilute their voting power. Legal action against the county eventually forced the map to be redrawn.
“Partisanship has nothing to do with this, it was a majority Democratic council that did this,” Sydnor said. “The situation seemed like it was about to repeat itself just last year … They had to be threatened again before they did better.”
During debates in House committee hearings, Democrat and Republican lawmakers raised concerns over the vote dilution bill’s scope and the potential costs it would inflict on municipalities.
“My feeling is that this thing is not quite ready for prime time,” Del. Chris Tomlinson, R-Frederick and Carroll, said after the first House hearing on the bill.
Tomlinson said that he did not expect the bill to make it to Moore by the end of the legislative session because some Democrats joined Republicans in concerns over the bill. During the hearing, Del. C.T. Wilson, D-Charles, said he was “terrified with putting voting rights in the hands of a judge” but had “no intentions on stopping this bill from moving forward.”
Soon after Maryland lawmakers passed the bill at the 11th hour, the House Republican Caucus issued a statement complaining about procedural decisions made by Peña-Melnyk in the final minutes of the session. She shot down repeated requests from House Minority Leader Jason Buckel, R-Allegany, to explain his opposition to the voting rights bill, a move which could have kept the bill from passing before the midnight deadline.
A spokesperson for Peña-Melnyk said the speaker “exercised her responsibility to manage the floor and ensure the people’s business was completed.”
Voting rights advocates said their fight is not finished. They vowed to return next year to expand protections in the bill and enact other pieces of the Maryland Voting Rights Act.
“Lots of frustration on my end because this is so critical,” Antoine said. “They again are continuing this trend of waiting until the very last minute, even now on elections, to navigate bills that truly do center protected classes.”