On July 29, the lawsuit Dorsey v Lamone, a Maryland ballot access case, was settled. The State Board of Elections agreed to lower the statewide independent petition requirement in 2016 and for any possible special election in 2017 from 1% of the number of registered voters (40,603) to exactly 10,000 signatures. The Board took this action because on June 10, 2016, U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell had denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The lawsuit had been filed in 2015 and argued that it is unconstitutional to require statewide independent candidates to obtain four times as many signatures as new parties. New parties get on the ballot with 10,000 signatures.

The State Board of Elections and the Attorney General also agreed to ask the 2017 legislative session to put the agreement into the law.

This is the third time this year that, due to a federal court, the number of signatures for either an independent candidate or a new party has been lowered. The other instances this year are the March 2016 Georgia decision reducing the requirement from approximately 50,000 signatures to exactly 7,500 signatures for president, and the Pennsylvania June 2016 decision cutting the statewide petitions from 21,775 signatures to exactly 5,000.