Maryland Democrats lost their bid to gerrymander the state's last Republican congressional seat off the map, and President Trump's executive order tightening mail-in ballot rules cleared its final injunction Wednesday — two wins for election integrity in one afternoon, and two losses for a political class that wants to draw the districts and count the votes.
Why it matters: The same crowd that rigs the maps wants to control the ballot process end to end. Wednesday's rulings are the rare moments where the courts said no.
In Maryland, Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Robert Thompson blocked a Democratic-backed constitutional amendment from appearing on the November ballot, ruling that state lawmakers blew past their own July 1 deadline for certifying ballot questions and then tried to dress up the measure as a mere "clarification" of redistricting standards. Thompson called the ballot language "intentionally misleading" and said that alone "should disqualify" the initiative. He also found the amendment violated the state constitution's single-issue rule by tucking in a provision granting the Maryland Supreme Court original jurisdiction over congressional redistricting lawsuits.
Democrats currently hold seven of Maryland's eight congressional seats. The amendment was designed to let them redraw districts across the Chesapeake Bay to swallow the seat held by Rep. Andy Harris, the conservative House Freedom Caucus chairman. It would have declared that the state constitution's compactness and natural-boundaries requirements apply only to legislative districts — not congressional ones — effectively sidestepping a 2022 court ruling that struck down a previous Democratic gerrymander.
Gov. Wes Moore called a special session in August to ram the measure through. The New York Post reported that Thompson, appointed by former Gov. Larry Hogan, concluded the legislature "neglected to adhere to the ordinary process and procedure for submitting proposed constitutional amendments to the people." The judge stayed his own ruling to allow the state to appeal to the Maryland Supreme Court, so this fight isn't over.
AP News framed the Maryland ruling as part of a broader Democratic effort to "counter a Republican redistricting movement pushed by President Donald Trump," noting that Virginia's Supreme Court also tossed a redistricting ballot measure this year over procedural violations. Both states were trying to follow California's model, where a Democratic-backed amendment authorized mid-decade redistricting. Democrats hope to pick up as many as five House seats from California's redrawn maps, plus one from Utah. Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for gains of up to 16 seats from new districts in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas.
Meanwhile, Trump's executive order requiring the Postal Service to deliver ballots only to eligible voters and effectively creating a verified voter list notched a win in federal court. The New York Post reported that U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee in Boston, lifted the final injunction on the order. The move follows a 6-3 Supreme Court decision siding with Trump against a challenge brought by California and 22 states. Trump has argued mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud; the establishment press routinely calls that claim baseless, but the courts keep letting the safeguards move forward.
The establishment wants to pick the voters before the voters pick them. Maryland Democrats tried to rewrite the rules after the deadline and mislead the electorate about what they were doing. A judge caught them. On the same day, a federal court let stand a commonsense requirement that ballots only go to people legally entitled to receive them. The question now is whether Maryland's Supreme Court will bail the map-riggers out — and whether the lower courts will keep standing between the people and the ballot box.
