Maryland needs open primaries. The 2027 General Assembly should pass them first.

More than 1 million Marylanders couldn't vote in Tuesday's primary. 38% of Maryland's state legislative seats had no opposition from any other party. The…

Maryland needs open primaries. When the General Assembly returns to Annapolis in January 2027, open primary reform should be the first bill on the floor. That's not a partisan position. Maryland's current Governor said the state's closed primary system "has run its course" in 2024. A senior House Democrat introduced legislation to open the primaries in both 2024 and 2025. A former Maryland Republican Party chair sued the state over closed primaries in 2025. A former Howard County Executive and former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party publicly endorsed open primaries in 2025. Two parties. Two branches. Same conclusion. Tuesday's primary showed why they're right. A note on the numbers in this post. All vote totals reflect unofficial results through the first canvass round on June 23. Mail in and provisional ballots continue to be counted through July 6. Final numbers will rise slightly, but the structural picture will not change. The system shut out more than 1 million Marylanders Maryland has approximately 4.3 million active registered voters. Of those, about 2.2 million are registered Democrats, about 1,019,000 are registered Republicans, and about 1,004,000 are registered as unaffiliated. Add roughly 80,000 more registered with minor parties, and more than one million Marylanders, nearly one in four, could not cast a ballot in Tuesday's primary. They are taxpayers funding elections they cannot participate in. Maryland Matters described the situation directly in its June 22 reporting: nearly one voter in four is barred from participating in Maryland's closed primaries. That is the eligibility problem. It is real, it is the most direct injustice in the current system, and it has a clean legislative fix. The primary increasingly IS the election When the parties don't…