‘Tactical’: Analysts, lawmakers skeptical of redistricting in elections bill

March 26, 2026

By Mennatalla Ibrahim

Addition makes the bill’s future uncertain in Senate

The Maryland House of Delegates on Thursday rejected a Republican-led effort to remove redistricting language from an elections bill, following a sharp partisan debate that raised new doubts about the measure’s future in the Senate.

In a 39-94 vote, delegates defeated an amendment from House Minority Leader Jason Buckel that would have stripped language tying the bill to congressional redistricting standards.

The legislation, Senate Bill 5, originally focused on requiring special elections in most cases to fill vacancies in the General Assembly. But a House committee on Tuesday added an amendment from Del. Kris Fair, a Frederick County Democrat, that would allow the General Assembly to authorize the Supreme Court of Maryland to review congressional district maps first — a change House Republicans and some legal experts insist waters down the bill’s purpose.

Under current law, vacancies in the General Assembly are filled by the governor from a list provided by the departing lawmaker’s political party.

“Amending a bill on special elections to include redistricting not only likely kills the bill, but it is probably in violation of the single-subject rule,” Montgomery County Sen. Cheryl Kagan told The Baltimore Sun in a Wednesday phone interview, referring to a Maryland state rule that indicates every legislative act passed by the General Assembly must embrace only one topic that clearly reflects its title. Kagan, the bill’s sponsor, added that she was not given advance notice of the amendment.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who previously served on a Maryland redistricting commission, described the move as more strategic than policy-driven.

“The word for me is tactical,” Olson said of House Democrats. “That rather screams tactics rather than conviction.”

Clash over scope and intent

Republicans said Thursday that Fair’s amendment fundamentally altered the bill and risked dooming a bipartisan-supported measure.

“That bill has nothing to do with congressional districts or congressional redistricting or legal standards. Nothing, absolutely nothing,” Buckel said.

Buckel’s amendment sought to impose stricter standards on congressional redistricting, including requirements for compactness, respect for political boundaries and limits on the use of partisan data.

Democrats countered, maintaining that the added language is a necessary clarification following a 2022 court ruling that raised questions about how Maryland’s constitution defines “legislative districts.” A revised 2022 map gave Democrats a 7-1 advantage and was not reviewed by a court. However, a subsequent decision by the Supreme Court of Maryland in a case involving state legislative maps reached a different conclusion about how constitutional standards apply.

“Our job is to make sure that when something is ambiguous, we come back and clarify it,” Fair said.

Democratic lawmakers also pushed back on claims that the bill violates Maryland state law because they both relate to elections.

Legal and policy analysts weigh in

Legal and political analysts said the dispute reflects both legitimate constitutional questions and broader strategic considerations.

Mark Graber, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, said there is a “real possibility” courts could view the amendment as unrelated to the bill’s original purpose, despite both provisions dealing broadly with elections.

“One purpose of the single-subject rule is to ensure that people do not face the choice of voting for provisions they don’t like to get provisions they do like,” Graber told The Sun in an email, adding the amendment could be seen as “non-germane.”

Timothy Maloney, a trial lawyer and former Prince George’s County delegate, described the constitutional question as uncertain. “It’s a close call,” Maloney told The Sun in a phone interview. “They’re both related to elections, but maybe not enough so.”

Still, Graber noted that adding significant amendments late in the legislative process is not unusual, though it may raise more concerns in states with stricter constitutional limits.

Olson warned the approach could derail long-standing efforts to reform how legislative vacancies are filled. “That’s such a shame because the vacancies issue is very important, and reformers have been working on it for years,” he said. “Now we won’t even get one of the things where there seemed to be a potential consensus for reform.”

Richard Vatz, a conservative political analyst, said he views the amendment as part of a broader pattern of partisan advantage in redistricting debates.

“The redistricting efforts across the country are usually done for political purposes. And in blue states, they are regularly unfair to Republican interests,” he told The Sun in a phone interview. “I’m always surprised that there is so much effort ostensibly for policy improvements that are really improvements for one party … It just shows another example that where you have one party dominance, you get policy dominance.”

With Buckel’s amendment rejected, the bill now advances with the redistricting language intact. It is expected to receive a final vote in the House on Friday, but its fate in the Senate remains uncertain as Senate President Bill Ferguson has remained steadfast throughout the session that the chamber won’t consider redistricting.