Maryland has become the latest state to improve access for independent and third party candidates. From a recent post by Richard Winger on Ballot Access News:

On May 26, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said that he is letting HB 529 become law without his signature. There is no legal difference between a bill that gets signed by a Governor, and a bill that becomes law without the Governor’s signature. Generally a Governor declines to sign certain bills because he or she doesn’t really approve of them, but on the other hand doesn’t want to veto.

The bill lowers the number of signatures for a statewide independent from 1% of the number of registered voters (now over 40,000) to exactly 10,000. The bill only came into existence because an independent candidate for U.S. Senate, Greg Dorsey, had filed a lawsuit in 2015, arguing that there is no good reason for a statewide independent to need over 40,000 signatures, when an entire new party can get on the ballot with exactly 10,000.

Read more from that Ballot Access News post by Richard Winger here. Richard Winger “founded Ballot Access News, a monthly print publication, in 1985. He lives in San Francisco and has been working for more tolerant ballot access laws for almost 50 years”.