Petition to the Maryland General Assembly: Enhance Transparency and Keep Big Money Out of Our Elections

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to unlimited spending in elections. In the recent Democratic Party primary, crypto groups spent $5.5 million to support their preferred candidate - successfully.[1] Much of this money comes from billionaires or corporations. Some of it cannot be traced. This kind of spending distorts our elections, making deep pockets more important to winning a race than sound policies and outreach to the voters. It’s time to hand the power back to the voters.

To the Members of the Maryland General Assembly:

We call on you to enact the following common-sense legislation to ensure that elected officials are accountable to the people they serve rather than special interests.

1. Election Transparency and Voter Choice

A law requiring all candidates, political action committees (PACs), and Super PACs operating in Maryland to fully disclose the original sources and amounts of their funding in a timely, accessible, and easily searchable public database and to include clear and prominent funding disclosures on their websites, social media profiles, and advertisements.

2. Corporate Power Reset Act

A corporate power reset law modeled on the one recently passed in Hawaii that removes the ability of corporations and associations to contribute to political campaigns in the State of Maryland.

3. Put Sensible Limits on SuperPACs 

Legislation limiting the total amount of campaign contributions that may be made in an election cycle to a Super PAC in Maryland. This would be a trigger law – it would go into effect only if the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the comparable Maine law.

 

Democracy works best when voters have confidence that elections are fair, transparent, and responsive to the public—not dominated by hidden money or special interests.

We respectfully ask the Maryland General Assembly to make these reforms a legislative priority in the next session and to work with citizens, ethics experts, and election officials to enact meaningful campaign finance and corporate accountability legislation.

For more complete information about the proposed laws, see the following documents and articles.

Transparency Proposal, IMD Coalition Campaign Finance Working Group, Aug. 2026.

Maryland Corporate Reset Law, HB 1378, introduced in the 2026 legislative session.

Testimony on HB 1378, Tom Moore.

Tom Moore article on the Corporate Reset Law.

Maine SuperPAC Law.

Explanation of the SuperPAC Law  as it applies to Maryland, IMD Coalition Campaign. Finance Working Group, Aug. 2026.

Lawrence Lessig article in Time magazine about the SuperPAC Law.

 
[1] https://www.spendnode.io/blog/fairshake-crypto-pac-maryland-primary-boafo-june-2026/