Montgomery County is a great place to live. It is one of the most affluent, educated and diverse communities in the nation. Many residents came here seeking the freedoms of a representative government after leaving places where civic participation was suppressed.
We like to see ourselves as a model of democratic engagement: high education, high turnout, high activism. But there is an important distinction between a healthy voter registration system and one that no longer reflects basic demographic reality. That distinction is at the heart of the current dispute over Maryland's voter roll maintenance, especially in Montgomery County.
The Republican National Committee and the Maryland Republican Party have sued Maryland election officials under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) on the basis that the state has failed to maintain accurate voter rolls. The lawsuit contends that Maryland's registration lists are significantly inflated, reporting more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens, and that election officials are not making the "reasonable efforts" required by federal law to remove deceased, duplicate, relocated or otherwise ineligible voters. The plaintiffs seek a court order requiring the state to implement adequate list maintenance procedures and remove ineligible names from the rolls.
I am a plaintiff in this lawsuit. I personally encountered inaccuracies during my campaign's door-knocking efforts when I ran for county executive. I hope that our lawsuit will require the Maryland Board of Elections to release detailed records and voter roll data to the public. This should be no problem if the rolls are accurate, as Maryland claims. If, as our lawsuit argues, they are not, we should work together to fix them. As context, the Democratic primary for Montgomery County executive was decided by fewer than 100 votes out of roughly 140,000 cast, not once, but twice. In close elections, confidence matters.
When voter registration statistics appear to exceed plausible eligible-population benchmarks, public confidence erodes, even if there is an administrative explanation. In an era when election legitimacy is constantly contested, confidence is not a luxury. It is the foundation.
Here's why this matters:
- Clean voter rolls protect every lawful voter. Bloated voter lists do not automatically imply fraud, but at a minimum, they do increase the risk of errors, mismatched records and the perception of vulnerability.
- Transparency is not suppression. Asking the government to show how many registrants are active versus inactive, how eligibility is verified, how list maintenance is conducted, how records are removed and how deaths and moves are processed is basic accountability, not an attack on voting.
- The state has legal obligations. The NVRA requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls. If Maryland is already complying, it should be able to demonstrate that clearly by releasing verifiable voter roll data.
- Voter ID matters. Voting is the cornerstone of civic engagement and must be protected. Requiring identification helps ensure that every lawful vote counts and that public confidence is preserved.
Election administrators correctly note that raw voter file counts can diverge from population estimates for ordinary reasons: People move, records shift from active to inactive status, data matching is imperfect and cleanup takes time. But the response should not be hand-wringing or name-calling.
Our lawsuit seeks to hold the state accountable for not doing everything that it should, or is legally required, to maintain accurate registration lists. Although publicly available data demonstrates Maryland is not doing its job, we hope this lawsuit, particularly through the discovery process, helps uncover more details about the state's inadequate efforts.
If the lawsuit's claims are wrong, which I highly doubt, sunlight will prove it. If there are shortcomings, sunlight will help correct them. Either way, Maryland voters deserve an election system that is not only fair but provably accurate.
In the end, elections run on trust -- and trust runs on truth.