Of the over 41 bills pertaining to elections that were introduced into the Maryland General Assembly during the 2006 session, four are now the law of Maryland. They are:

• HB 800, an emergency measure that states that write-in federal absentee ballots can be voter registration applications

• HB 1368, an emergency bill that covers several issues, including:
  1. Administering voter registration and absentee voting for nursing homes and assisted living facilities
  2. Placing voter precincts on college campuses
  3. Establishing hours, 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., for early voting Tuesday through Saturday before primary and general elections
  4. Specifying names sites for every early voting polling place in each jurisdiction throughout Maryland
  5. Requiring state and local boards of elections to inform the public about early voting, including sites
  6. A networked computer at each polling place for early, primary, and general elections, the computer containing a record of all registered voters in the county (known as electronic poll books or e-poll books)
  7. The governor's inclusion in the State budget each year sufficient State general funds to implement the electronic poll books

N.B.: This bill is subject to a referendum aimed at overturning it. A petition drive has been mounted to place it on the November ballot for a popular vote. As emergency legislation it could not be vetoed, nor can it be held in abeyance unless and until the voters have spoken (in this instance on November 7). Barring a judicial decision to the contrary, if the referendum to overturn HB 1368 is passed by the voters in November, it will not be voided until after the election.

• SB 101, an emergency bill that states that petitions are verified for the purpose of assuring that the signature is of a person who is a registered voter

• SB 124, an emergency measure that keeps private the addresses of certain voters

Three bills of the 2005 session that had been vetoed by the Governor were overridden by the General Assembly in January 2006. They are:

• HB 622, absentee voting on demand, which removed all conditions for an eligible registered voter to cast an absentee ballot

• SB 287, which dealt with five issues:
  1. A specific method of handling voters whose identity is challenged at the polling place
  2. Prohibitions of various conduct intended to influence a voter not to vote
  3. Prohibitions of conduct that would deny the right to vote based on race, color, or disability
  4. Penalties for impersonating a law enforcement authority
  5. Validating votes cast on provisional ballots based on the voter's address of residence

• SB 478, which established early voting in Maryland, providing the opportunity for eligible voters to cast votes at a supervised polling place with guaranteed privacy while voting on the Tuesday through Saturday before primary and general elections. N.B.: A group, Marylanders for Fair Elections, has mounted a petition drive aimed at overturning this bill by placing it on the November ballot as a referendum issue, despite an opinion by the Maryland Attorney General's office that states that SB 478 is a 2005 bill, passed in 2005, and cannot be brought to referendum in 2006. There has been a legal challenge to this opinion, based on the fact that the 2005 SB 478 was not enacted until 2006. Meanwhile Marylanders for Fair Elections is embroiled in a lawsuit against the State Board of Elections, alleging that the board unlawfully disqualified petition signatures earlier this summer. The Maryland Court of Appeals is expected to hear this case on July 25.

  
  

• Voting equipment that provides an individual voter verified paper record of ballot

• Mandatory audits of votes cast following elections

• Mandatory recounts of votes cast if equipment totals did not match audit results to the extent that the difference might affect the outcome of a choice of candidate or question

• Rules for polling places on private property

• Voter registration requirements for ex-felons

• Changing elections for circuit court judges to nonpartisan, which would broaden voter participation

• More identification for registering to vote than is presently required, including proof of citizenship

• All mail-in voting for the primary and general elections of 2006

• More identification at the polling place for voters than is presently required

• More identification to cast absentee ballots than is presently required

• A study of the feasibility of registering to vote on election day

• A fixed statewide compensation for chief judges and other election judges

• A delay in the commencement of early voting until 2008

• A method of filling vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland in the event the Speaker of the U.S. House declared that there were ten vacancies.

• Instant run-off