Maryland voters approve Democratic-backed redistricting amendment

Maryland voters approved a constitutional amendment that paves the way for Democrats to redraw their state’s congressional map, NBC News projects.

The result ensures the mid-decade redistricting battle that involved nearly a dozen states ahead of this year’s midterms will continue into the next election cycle. It’s also a major victory for Gov. Wes Moore, a potential 2028 presidential contender who has forcefully pushed for his state to join that fight.

The measure that appeared on Maryland’s ballot, Question 3, sought to exempt congressional redistricting efforts from the requirements in the state constitution, which says districts must be “compact in form, and of substantially equal population,” and that lawmakers must give “due regard” to “natural boundaries and the boundaries of political subdivisions.”

In 2022, a state judge rejected a Democratic effort to carve up Maryland’s lone Republican-held House district as unconstitutional.

Some Maryland Democrats argued that the standards laid out in the state constitution applied to legislative districts, not congressional ones, and advocated that they draw new maps ahead of the 2026 elections.

The move was backed by Moore, as well as Democratic leaders in the state House and in Congress. State Senate President Bill Ferguson declined to take up a new map, pointing to the legal issues from the 2022 case and the potential that it could backfire politically.

But he opened the door to mid-decade redistricting after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act further fueled Republican efforts to draw new maps. Maryland’s Democratic-controlled Legislature then voted in August to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would allow it to take up a redistricting effort before the 2028 elections.

“Maryland must respond as the ground shifts under us,” Ferguson said at the time.

Supporters of the amendment went up with their first ads less than a month before the election, pitching it as a way for Marylanders to fight back against President Donald Trump’s “power grab.” Republicans argued the measure would take away voters’ right to fair districts.

States typically redraw their congressional maps at the start of the decade after the new census. But Trump kicked off an unusual mid-decade redistricting season when he called on Republican-run states to draw new maps to shore up the party’s narrow House majority.

Nine states have enacted new maps since 2025: Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. Courts also stopped redrawn maps from being used this year in Missouri and Virginia.