Although the Maryland Green Party first gained official recognition in the state in 2000, party chairman Brian Bittner proudly called it the state’s “new” party this week.

That’s because state election officials confirmed that the party had collected more than the 10,000 signatures required to be officially recognized by the state as a political party, a designation that allows the party to put candidates on the ballot without having to go through a petition process for them.

It was a close call: the party submitted more than 17,000 signatures, but the state authorities only checked 10,134 of them. But Bittner is not looking back.

“That’s enough for this year,” said Bittner. “So we are a ‘new party’.”

Thanks to its new status, the Maryland Green Party was able to put presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Butch Ware on the Maryland ballot. They are in the presidential race alongside Republican candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance, Democrats Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and the Libertarian slate of candidates Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat.

Voters also have the option of voting for independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan, who collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot but suspended their statewide campaign on Friday. Another 10 candidates will not appear on the ballot but have filed paperwork with the Maryland State Board of Elections to be considered as presidential candidates.

Kennedy withdrew from the swing states but will be on the Maryland ballot in November

It is the latest example in the history of the Greens as a recognized political party in the state, which has been more or less successful. The recognition of a party lasts for two years unless its candidate receives at least 1% of the vote in the next general election or 1% of the state’s voters are registered as members. Otherwise, the party must collect signatures again.

The Maryland Green Party was first recognized in 2000 and has sought official recognition five times since then, with the most recent recognition lapsed in 2022 when Bittner said COVID-19 made it difficult to collect signatures.

Maryland is one of several states where political parties other than Republicans and Democrats can file petitions to get on the ballot, but the requirements vary, according to a 2020 summary from the National Association of Secretaries of State. In Louisiana, only 1,000 voters need to register with a party for it to be recognized, while Massachusetts and Missouri, like Maryland, require 10,000 petition signatures. In states like Wyoming and Idaho, a candidate or party must have enough signatures to reach 2% of the last election’s voters to be recognized.

Bittner believes that in a heavily Democratic state like Maryland, third-party efforts are often an uphill battle and just getting on the ballot is a challenge.

“It’s an outdated system. A new party has to collect 10,000 signatures from registered voters in Maryland. Each signature has to be on a piece of paper. It has to be signed with a pen,” he said, pointing out that something as simple as people signing differently than what is on their voter registration forms or accidentally putting the wrong date can cause a petition to be rejected.

Bittner said that collecting signatures has taken up much of the party’s time this year, time that could have been spent recruiting candidates for political office.

“We think that maybe on some level the people who keep these laws in place know that it takes up all of our time,” he said. “And they know that we can’t recruit and build candidates when we’re busy trying to get on the ballot. So that’s kind of limited our recruiting for 2024.”

This has allowed the party – which is seen as a progressive alternative to the Democrats and focuses on environmental protection and the effects of climate change – to recruit a handful of candidates for 2024 in addition to Stein. The Greens in Maryland are nominating Claudia Barber for district judge in Anne Arundel County, Nancy Wallace for the House seat currently held by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-8th), and Renaud Brown for the Baltimore City Council’s 14th District, currently held by Councilwoman Odette Ramos.

Independent poll shows neck-and-neck race in Maryland Senate

Bittner is aware that the growth of Maryland’s Green Party is a “long-term” vision, and he has no idea that the presence of Green Party candidates will greatly influence this fall’s election.

“I don’t think the Green Party is going to have a significant impact on the election when it comes to who becomes president,” he said. “I think it’s more important that we dedicate ourselves to building this movement. We need to change the way laws are written, the way elections are held and the way votes are counted.”

A recent AARP poll of 600 likely voters found that Stein had 1 percent of the support of those choosing a presidential candidate, far behind Harris, who received 64 percent of the vote in the poll, and Trump, who received 32 percent.

But without the burden of collecting signatures for the next election, Bittner believes the party will have more time to recruit candidates for the 2026 election.

“In 2026, we want to field a strong candidate for governor and we want to field local candidates across the state … so we’re trying to recruit for that right now,” Bittner said.

“In the long term, we have a vision of a multi-party democracy. Where there are not two parties fighting for 99 percent of the vote and four or three parties fighting for one percent, but we want a system where there are five to six parties that share the vote roughly equally. And that forces the legislators to come together and do real work,” he said.