Maryland’s Primary Elections Are Unconstitutional, Lawsuit Alleges
30th May 2025
The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.
About 10 years ago, Dona Sauerburger, a longtime Maryland Democrat disillusioned with America’s two-party system, decided to become an independent voter.
But that choice, she said, was immediately disenfranchising because Maryland residents who register as unaffiliated with a political party are not allowed to vote in primary elections. So for years, Sauerburger protested outside primary polling places and advocated for change before state lawmakers in Annapolis — without success.
Now she is taking her fight to the courts, leading a group of independents in a lawsuit against Maryland and the Board of Elections that alleges the state’s partisan, or closed, primary process is unconstitutional and violates the rights of registered voters like her who are not affiliated with a political party.
That assumes that voters who are not members of a particular political have some ‘right’ to help decide who that party’s candidate will be. This directly destroys the reason for having political parties in the first place, and further buries the Freedom of Association guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment that was pretty much shot in the head by the Civil Rights laws in the 1960s.