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After an unconventional 2020 election which saw unprecedented absentee ballot use, Maryland lawmakers instituted a slew of election reforms during the 2021 legislative session.
Those measures include permanently expanding mail-in voting, ramping up the number of early voting centers and making voting materials more accessible to students and military voters – far cries from the restrictive voting measures being put in place by other states.
Restrictive voting laws enacted in other states have recently been a flashpoint in Congress: During a Tuesday U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, senators discussed restoration of a key section in the Voting Rights Act that would prevent states, mostly in the South, from changing their election laws without federal approval.
During the more than four-hour hearing, witnesses opposed to a sweeping new Georgia law warned that if Congress did not modernize and pass Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, then voters of color would be disenfranchised. That law contrasts sharply with Maryland’s recent voting expansions and limits absentee voting, restricts drop boxes to inside early voting locations except during a public health emergency, and makes it illegal for volunteers to hand out food and water to those waiting in long lines to cast their ballots.
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