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| 2024 MD districts |
State House Speaker Joseline Peña-Melnyk says there is still enough time to redraw congressional district lines — which Democrats believe could win them a new seat — but that the Feb. 24 candidate filing deadline may need to be delayed to accommodate a new map.
“It’s just a matter of making it a priority, and the House did,” Peña-Melnyk said in an exclusive interview with The Baltimore Sun. Delaying the filing deadline is not as dramatic as pushing back the primary election itself — and there is no talk of that — but Republicans say it would disrupt election planning and leave candidates with questions about where they’ll run.
The timing around the election season was also a concern of Senate President Bill Ferguson, who has been a staunch opponent of mid-cycle redistricting. “The length of those delays is very dependent on how quickly the local boards of election could implement a new map after all legal challenges are settled, which almost certainly means additional weeks of a delay, if not months,” Ferguson said in a letter to his colleagues last October. An aide of Ferguson’s reiterated his position on Wednesday. The Senate president has called the new map “objectively unconstitutional,” saying it “breaks apart more neighborhoods and communities” than the existing district lines.
The candidate filing deadline is a specific date for anyone who wants to appear on the 2026 primary ballot. Delays could mean voters have less time to learn about their candidates. Moving back filing deadlines can also be problematic for candidates because they may not know which voters to target in their campaigns.
The map must be locked in by the deadline so district boundaries can be implemented and candidates can learn about their districts. When talking to The Sun, Peña-Melnyk referenced an emergency bill she supports by Del. Kris Fair, a Frederick County Democrat, that would push the filing deadline to March 20. The bill is pending.
The House of Delegates on Feb. 2 approved a redrawing of the boundaries of the state’s eight U.S. House districts. But the map — supported by Gov. Wes Moore and opposed by state Republicans — may stall because Ferguson is resisting the redistricting push, saying it could “backfire in our courts” and hurt Democrats.
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| Proposed 2026 MD district map |
Currently, only one of eight districts in Maryland is held by a Republican, the 1st district, which is mostly the Eastern Shore. This bill would drag in enough houses from across the Bay Bridge to make that a Democrat majority, a masterpiece worthy of Elbridge Gerry's name, a gerrymander, and leaving the 40% of the state which votes Republican with no representation.
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