Led by President Donald Trump, Republicans are pushing for new federal voting restrictions that could change how Maryland voters cast their ballots this year.
And as a result, some of the more than 850,000 state residents who have voted by mail in the past might need to join the voting lines on Election Day.
Long a critic of mail-in voting, Trump once again criticized its security at a roundtable event on March 23.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” said Trump, who himself voted by mail in a March special election in Florida. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it.”
Trump has never provided any evidence to back his claims about mail-in voting. And voting rights advocates, of course, are not happy with the Trump administration’s stance.
Morgan Drayton, the policy and engagement manager at Common Cause Maryland, stressed the importance of maintaining Maryland’s current voting systems.
“We know that mail-in voting is very secure in Maryland,” Drayton said. “It’s hugely popular here in Maryland. We know that it’s used by millions across the country.”
More and more Marylanders voted by mail over the past two elections. Approximately 30% of voters requested a mail-in ballot in 2024, increasing by 17% from 2022, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections.
But this year, pending court cases, Trump administration executive orders and proposed legislation each have the potential to change Maryland’s voting process and restrict access to mail-in ballots.
In the courts
Most immediately, an upcoming Supreme Court decision could bring changes nationwide to mail-in voting systems, including Maryland’s own process.
In the case, titled Watson v. Republican National Committee, Republicans are challenging a Mississippi law that allows the state to count ballots even if they are not received by Election Day.
The Republican National Committee argued in its opposition brief that a firm deadline for counting ballots by Election Day is the only way to respect the congressional decision to set elections for the first Tuesday in November.
“So long as election officials continue to accept ballots, the election isn’t over; ‘the proverbial ballot box’ is not ‘closed,’” the RNC said in its brief to the court. “A post-election receipt deadline for mail ballots thus extends ‘the election’ beyond the ‘day’ set by Congress.”
Dara Johnson, an associate staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, noted that the case could upend Maryland’s current voting deadlines.
“They want to make sure that only ballots that are actually cast and received by Election Day can be counted,” Johnson said. “That really would be disruptive to our absentee ballot process right here in Maryland, but across the country as well.”
Maryland and 17 other states used a similar policy to Mississippi in 2024, allowing any ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted. Thirteen of the states publicly revealed their post-Election Day ballot totals, which averaged 1.07% of their voters who met the criteria, according to a study by Votebeat. Maryland did not announce how many ballots it received after Election Day in 2024.
Johnson described closing off the counting of mail-in ballots on Election Day as “archaic” compared to Maryland’s current rules, which allow ballots to be counted until the second Friday after the election.
“Sometimes it can take a little while to get through the mail,” Johnson said. “There could be processing issues…whether it’s folks in a senior home, whether it’s someone in a farm community, anyone who faces any barrier to the ballot…That’s not a reason to say that their vote shouldn’t count.”
The Supreme Court heard arguments for the case on March 23. A decision is expected before the court’s session ends the last week of June.
Trump’s voter registry
While awaiting the court decision, the Trump administration has simultaneously pursued other ways to reform voting.
President Trump signed an executive order on March 31 to create a national voter registry using government records, including Social Security numbers and any federal agency’s databases. He said the move aimed to prevent voter fraud.
“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary,” Trump said at the time.
Research generally shows that not to be the case. The Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank, studied mail-in voting trends since President Trump’s first election in 2016. The group found an average of fewer than 47 cases of mail-in voter fraud in each election between 2016 and 2022.
The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts filed a federal lawsuit against the executive order on April 2, denouncing it as an “extraordinary and abusive assertion of executive power over the administration of federal elections.”
Drayton explained that this added federal voting obstacle would negatively affect minority groups across Maryland.
“We’ve seen concerns for women, definitely communities of color, who we know are more likely to face errors in their federal data,” Drayton said. “It could also hurt veterans, seniors, people with disabilities, working families, students and anyone who might not be able to make it to the polls in person.”
Rob Weiner, the director of voting rights at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, disagreed with letting the Trump administration handle private voting information.
“It’s hard to think of anyone less worthy of trust of a database of personal identifying information for all Americans,” Weiner said. “Possibilities for abuse are really significant and diverse…The administration says they want to use it to induce states to purge people from their voting rolls on the grounds that they’re non-citizens.”
The executive order requires the Department of Homeland Security to create and maintain the voter list with the Social Security Administration. Those agencies would submit the list to the states at least 60 days before Election Day. Any state holding a special federal election would have to request the list ahead of voting.
The creation of this federal voter roll system could directly affect who can vote. Under the executive order, the U.S. Postal Service would not accept any mail-in ballots “unless those individuals have been enrolled on a state-specific list.”
Weiner said he does not view concerns about non-citizen voting as significant enough to warrant federal action. He said the executive order diminishes the states’ constitutional duty to conduct their own elections and harshly criticized the notion of creating a federal voter registry.
“This is like a Rube Goldberg contraption, where DHS is supposed to have a list, and then they send that to the states,” Weiner said. “The Post Office takes that list and they’re not supposed to mail to anybody that isn’t on the list…It gives DHS and the Postal Service a veto over who gets to vote and, if it’s inaccurate, it prevents a lot of people from voting.”
The SAVE Act
On top of all that, Congressional Republicans have pushed for legislation over the last year that would remove the need for executive orders or the Supreme Court to change mail-in voting.
First proposed by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, in 2024, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require proof of citizenship to vote in any federal election. Roy revived the legislation last year, citing concerns about fraudulent voting.
“American elections belong to American citizens, and the public’s confidence in those elections is the cornerstone of our republic,” Roy said in a statement at the time. “We in Congress have a duty to our fellow citizens to provide that confidence and put concrete enforcement in place to ensure that our elections and our sovereignty cannot be hijacked.”
The bill passed in the U.S. House with 220 votes on April 10. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, sponsored it in the U.S. Senate and 49 Republican senators joined him as cosponsors.
The SAVE Act would require every federal voter to show at least one personal document to a poll worker, including a birth certificate, a photo ID, a U.S. passport or a citizenship certificate. Mail-in voters would need to show their ID in person before the election, eliminating the option to request and return ballot forms by mail or online.
Weiner, of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that if the law were to pass, it would be difficult for every voter to find the required documentation before this year’s elections.
“Most people in this country don’t have passports, nor do they have birth certificates sitting around the house, so they’d have to provide that before they could register to vote,” said Weiner, who called the bill a “smorgasbord of voter suppression.”
Drayton said she believes Maryland voters would be disenfranchised if ID checks lengthen voting lines. She also questioned voters’ ability to provide consistent identification.
“Your information would have to match up with whatever it was on your birth certificate,” Drayton said. “Women change their names a lot when they get married. If you don’t have all of your documents squared away with a birth certificate that’s updated with your new married name, you might not be able to cast your ballot.”
The SAVE Act remains stalled in the U.S. Senate, where Democrats are blocking the bill – and since Senate rules essentially require 60 votes for legislation to move forward, they have the power to do so. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced in February that Democrats would not allow a vote on the bill.
“The SAVE Act is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Schumer said. “Democrats will not sign our names to this radical piece of legislation that takes away the right to vote from tens of millions of American citizens.”
A look ahead
It’s unclear whether any of the potential federal voting reforms will affect the state’s primaries this summer.
Early voting in the primaries begins June 11. Maryland voters can request a mail-in ballot for the June 23 primaries until June 16 and have until Oct. 26 to make that request before Election Day.
Much uncertainty surrounds the fall election process, too..
Drayton said she is not sure what to expect from the Postal Service around this year’s elections. There’s even been speculation that the Trump administration will somehow order the Postal Service to confiscate mail-in ballots.
“The administration’s willingness to undermine our elections is almost unlimited and their creativity is very active, so I don’t rule out anything nowadays,” Weiner said. “Every time I’ve thought I would rule something out, I’ve been surprised, so I don’t do it anymore.”