By Barry Chodak
Before the League of Women Voters webinar on Wednesday November 12, 2025, I prepared a question for Mr. DeMarinis, the Administrator of Maryland Elections. After logging in to the webinar, I discovered that the chat for reaching all attendees had been disabled. Apparently the League did not want us sharing comments during the event, a policy consistent with their fear of dis- and mis-information. They did provide a way for us to send questions to a screener, which unfortunately for me was restricted to a thousand words. For those who can put up with my bloviating, here is what I prepared:
My question for Mr. DeMarinis:
Tonight, the focus was on machines, when the real focus has to be on what goes into those machines. The Md Constitution makes our Voter Rolls the Conclusive Evidence of the right to vote.
At the October 23rd meeting of the State Board of Elections, you said “We have to be 100% certain when we remove someone. That is why it is a process.” OK, let’s look at the process:
-The process for undeliverable returned mail includes making the voter inactive.
-Citizen voter groups have provided their local board with lists of people registered at self-storage locations, UPS offices, and other non-residential addresses. It would only take a returned letter to make those people inactive.
-The process for removing a deceased voter also includes mailings when based on a reliable source. You sent out a directive for local boards to ignore sources like Legacy, a source that is used by thousands of genealogists who consider it worth using.
-You have repeatedly relied on ERIC alone when it includes less than half of the states.
-As a result of these and other process directives, the percentage of registered voters in 2024 was higher than two thirds of the states – a gap that has drawn the attention of the Department of Justice.
-Lastly, I’m unaware of efforts to screen for non-citizens, especially with motor-voter registrations. Non-citizens do not have a right to vote. The Md Constitution makes it clear who can be on the rolls: 18, a citizen and a resident of the state. The process is set to support those requirements.
Maryland is a same day register and vote state. Any person on the Inactive list only needs to show up at a polling place. Even a supposedly dead person can walk in and vote. No one gets disenfranchised by following the process as designed.
Are you going to continue to follow the DeMarinis 100% certainty process or take this as a wake-up call to clean up our voter rolls?
