Voters Can't Add 4 Seats To Baltimore County Council, 2-Seat Expansion Remains Possible

BALTIMORE COUNTY, MD — The push to add four seats to the Baltimore County Council failed, multiple reports said Tuesday. A November referendum will still decide if the Council should grow by two seats.

The Council has had seven members since 1956, but the county population has more than doubled to 845,000 people.

Supporters say additional council members would allow for better representation of each voter. Proponents also think this will diversify the all-male Council with only one Black member.

Opponents worry about the additional salary costs and allege that four more Council seats would favor Democrats, who currently have a 4-3 advantage.

“Make no mistake – the effort to add four seats to the County Council has been spearheaded by partisan activists with the goal of wiping out two-party government in Baltimore County,” David Marks (R-Upper Falls) said on Facebook on July 24. “The same state legislators backing this effort today supported extreme gerrymandering in Annapolis. Government works best with balance and competition between both parties – not the monopoly pushed by partisan activists.”

The County Council on July 1 reached a bipartisan agreement to send the two-seat expansion to a referendum this fall. Republican council members agreed that the proposed new district maps were fair. The same ballot question will also ask voters if council members should be paid a full-time salary, rather than their current part-time pay.

Marks said the two-seat expansion “gives both political parties a fighting chance across Baltimore County.”

WYPR said the four-seat expansion effort, orchestrated by Vote4More, was trying to gather 10,000 signatures by the Monday deadline to put it on the General Election ballot. It would’ve competed against the two-seat expansion referendum, but the four-member addition measure ran into complications.

The Baltimore Sun reported that the Board of Elections discarded nearly 3,000 signatures during the review required under state law.

Election officials said those signatures lacked the signers’ middle initial or middle name, WYPR reported.

Vote4More submitted 1,400 supplemental signatures, but The Sun reported that they didn’t meet the state requirements.

“What hurts me is that getting them so excited, I can’t deliver it,” Vote4More Chair Linda Dorsey-Walker said, according to WYPR.

Dorsey-Walker plans to appeal the rejection of her petition.

Referendum Will Settle Baltimore County Council Expansion Debate