September 17, 2024
Today is National Voter Registration Day and we’re thrilled to be celebrating it with a new report on how well Maryland is serving new voters as they come of age. This report, which we co-authored with Laura Brill of The Civics Center was featured in this morning’s edition of the Baltimore Banner.
The report has both good and bad news for community leaders and policy makers looking to strengthen democracy in Maryland. Maryland is doing better than many other states at serving new voters. But there are huge inequalities between Maryland counties and these gaps are highly correlated with race and income. In order to serve the 25,000 - 30,000 eligible new voters who are currently not getting registered each year, Maryland needs to explore new reforms like Secure Automatic Voter Registration and investments in student poll worker programs and other types of voter education through schools to close the gap. In the coming months, we will be publishing new analyses of how much impact policy makers should expect from these reforms and where additional investment is needed in order to ensure equitable implementation.
