MD Voter Registration: What You Need To Do Before Nov. 8 Election

MARYLAND — The drive to get people to the polls for the Nov. 8 midterm elections in Maryland started in earnest Tuesday with National Voter Registration Day, and efforts continue for the next month.

The last date to register to vote in Maryland’s general election is Oct. 18. Races on the ballot include governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, one U.S. Senate seat and members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

To vote by mail, residents must request a mail-in ballot from the State Board of Elections or your local board. Your request for a mail-in ballot for the gubernatorial general election must be received by Maryland's State Board of Elections by Nov. 1.

Mail-in ballots must be postmarked or placed in a designated ballot drop box by 8 p.m. on Nov. 8 for the gubernatorial general election.

To vote in person, Marylanders can vote during early voting or on election day:

• Early voting will be held for eight days and begins on Oct. 27 through Nov. 3 from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. for the gubernatorial general election. Marylanders can vote early at any early voting center in the county they live in.
• The gubernatorial general election day falls on Nov. 8. To vote in person on election days, vote at your assigned polling place.
• Due to a recent change in law, the State Board of Elections now mails every voter an application for a mail-in ballot.
• Anyone who prefers to vote in person for the gubernatorial general election, early voting centers will be open from Oct. 27 through Nov. 3 from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., and election day polling places will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. Nov. 8 for Election Day. Marylanders can vote early at any early voting center in a voter's jurisdiction of residence or at an assigned polling place on election day.

Maryland is not among 39 states that have made significant changes in election laws since the 2020 presidential election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.

President Joe Biden said in a statement Monday the United States “has not always lived up to its promise of equal access to the right to vote,” decrying state legislatures he said “are passing new forms of voting restrictions to limit participating and choose whose vote can count at all.”

“As the late Representative John Lewis, an icon of the voting rights struggle, would say, ‘democracy is not a state; it is an act.’ Our Founding Fathers understood this, as did the suffragists at the National Women’s Rights Convention of 1848, the other giants of the Civil Rights Movement, and today’s activists working for a freer, fairer, and more accessible voting system. Just as securing and protecting voting rights was the test of their times, it continues to be the challenge of ours.”

Biden renewed his commitment to the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would “address election subversion, remove dark money from politics, end partisan gerrymandering, and fix the gaping holes in voter access left by the Supreme Court of the United States.”

He also said he is doubling both the number of voter advocates appointed to the Department of Justice and the agency’s voting rights enforcement staff, and also giving the agency purview over discriminatory laws before they go into effect.

More than 4.7 million Americans have been registered to vote in the Voter Registration Day project to date. More than 300,000 people registered to vote for the first time on the inaugural National Voter Registration Day in 2019. Some 1.5 million people registered through the project for the 2020 General Election, according to the website.

Last year, 233,571 people registered or updated their registration. Though considerably smaller than the number of people who registered for the 2020 presidential election, the number was still nearly twice the number registered in the previous post-presidential cycle, the report noted.

Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the project helped 865,015 people register to vote.

A step-by-step process on the National Voter Registration Day website guides potential voters through registration. For all potential voters: Check your registration status, especially if you’ve moved since you last voted, recently turned 18 or changed your name.