Op-Ed: The Way Forward for Multiparty Democracy in Maryland

In 2024, after a panel discussion, I was talking with State Senator Charles Sydnor and I kept saying "two-party system." He stopped me. We don't have a two-party system, he said. You're on the ballot. You have a party. You're advocating to change things. Stop acting like you don't exist.

He was right. Maryland doesn't have a two-party system. Maryland law explicitly creates two classes of political parties: principal parties (the Democrats and Republicans) and non-principal parties (Greens, Libertarians, the Working Class Party). As members of non-principal parties we collect signatures, qualify for ballot lines, and run candidates. The question isn't how to break a two-party system. It's how to make the multiparty system we already have actually work. That means elected officials who have to earn votes from every community instead of assuming them, and a supermajority that has to negotiate instead of governing unchecked.

The demand is there. According to Gallup, forty-five percent of Americans now identify as independents, a record high. Sixty-two percent say a third party is needed. According to the State Board of Elections, nearly one million Maryland voters are registered as unaffiliated. People are leaving the two parties because they want more choices and different outcomes.

I talked about this recently with Dayvon Love of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. He puts it bluntly: the Democratic Party has an exploitative relationship with its Black working-class base. It panders when it needs votes but will not advance the policies that would shift real power to communities. Without a credible political threat to its left, that will not change. The cost is concrete: policies that would address the material conditions of Black communities get delayed, vetoed, or watered down because there is no electoral consequence for failing to deliver. What communities need are alternatives with enough structural support to change outcomes, not just more choices on paper.

I've been working on this for a decade. This session, I testified on a suite of bills targeting the barriers that keep non-principal parties from competing. These are things the General Assembly can pass right now.

Debate access. HB 101 would require any public broadcaster receiving state funds to invite all ballot-qualified candidates to general election debates for statewide office. Maryland Public Television currently sets a 10% polling threshold. No candidate outside the two principal parties has reached 10% since Reconstruction. That threshold doesn't filter for quality. It filters out an entire class of legally recognized parties.

Ballot access. The Green Party has petitioned to get on the ballot seven times, more than any party in state history. Every time, roughly 30% of signatures are invalidated because of paper-form technicalities. When electronic signatures were piloted during COVID, the validation rate jumped above 90%. HB 499 would make electronic petitions permanent and let voters cure technical errors.

Public financing. Our campaign is the only active statewide campaign using Maryland's Fair Campaign Financing Fund. As political scientist Dr. Bernard Tamas describes it: "Third parties are stuck in a vicious cycle of not being able to build resources because they are seen as unable to win, and unable to increase their voter support because they cannot raise resources." HB 568 would extend public financing to legislative candidates, breaking that cycle in every district.

Ranked choice voting. HB 580 would give Montgomery County the authority to study and adopt ranked choice voting, which lets people vote their values without fear of wasting their vote. Takoma Park has already done it successfully; Greenbelt recently adopted it. SB 236 would ensure that as we modernize how we vote, the systems that count our votes are rigorously certified.

Most of these bills will not pass this session. I know that. They are a starting point for a bigger agenda. Beyond what is on the table this year, Maryland needs public financing for the parties themselves, not just individual candidates, and proportional representation in the House of Delegates, the single reform most likely to put multiple parties in government. That agenda is years away.

But every bill that passes, every hearing where these arguments get made, every voter who registers outside the two parties is part of building the infrastructure to get there. Dayvon pressed me on something in our conversation that I think matters: if you are going to use a ballot line to challenge the existing power structure, you have to own the consequences of doing so. The two parties are not the same. But they agree on enough that someone has to be willing to hold them accountable at the ballot box. That is real power, and wielding it responsibly is what separates serious politics from protest.

Maryland already has the legal framework for a multiparty system. What it does not have is the infrastructure to let that system function. This is not a protest. It is patient, serious work to make Maryland's democracy match what its own laws already promise.

Andy Ellis is seeking the Green Party nomination for Governor of Maryland. He and Lt. Governor candidate Owen Silverman Andrews are running on a platform of multiparty democracy, economic justice, and government accountability. Learn more at gogreen2026.com.