Tonya Sweat turns to state Supreme Court in push to appear on November ballots

After losing her suit against the county elections board Thursday, aspiring candidate Tonya Sweat said she would appeal to the Supreme Court of Maryland, in hopes of appearing on November ballots.

“The hearing today ended as I expected,” Sweat said in an interview after she received the judge’s ruling. “I’m not surprised [or] disappointed. I got just what I thought I was gonna get.”

After she files her appeal, Sweat will be at least the second Prince George’s County unaffiliated candidate to seek the high court’s intervention this election cycle.

Lisa Russell, who’s hoping to appear on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate for state delegate representing District 23, filed her appeal Wednesday after losing her suit against the Maryland State Board of Elections.

An Anne Arundel County circuit court judge had ruled earlier that day that Russell couldn’t appear on the ballot.

“I’m now chasing her down,” Sweat said of Russell in a social media post Thursday.

Sweat, a consultant, attorney and community advocate who represented herself in court, has sued the Prince George’s County board of elections over its determination that she didn’t secure enough signatures to appear on the ballot as an unaffiliated candidate.

She’s seeking to challenge County Executive Aisha Braveboy, who won the Democratic primary in June.

Braveboy, formerly the county state’s attorney, won a special election in 2025 to finish Angela Alsobrooks’ four-year term. Alsobrooks left the office after winning election to the U.S. Senate.

In a preliminary ruling Monday, Judge William Snoddy declined Sweat’s request to block the certification of general election ballots that exclude her name.

He ruled against Sweat again Thursday, following a more substantive hearing.

Sweat said she intends to challenge Snoddy’s determination that she needs signatures from at least 6,531 voters — a total determined by the county elections board — to appear on the ballot.

She has contended the elections board inflated the required number of signatures by including inactive voters in its count of those eligible in the district. Local candidates not affiliated with a political party must submit a petition with signatures from at least 1% of eligible voters in the district they are seeking to represent.

Sweat submitted 6,605 signatures, but the board rejected 1,300 of them, in some cases because the signer wasn’t a registered voter.

Sweat said she also intends to raise broader concerns about the petition process.

“Why is it that two parties can pay $25 and it’s a done deal, but everybody else has gotta go through a mountain of paperwork and go through rivers and lakes and streams of processes?” she said, referencing the state’s $25 candidate filing fee.

Sweat, though, has a backup plan if her appeal is unsuccessful.

Her team has designed campaign shirts advertising Sweat as a write-in candidate; she posed with one in her social media post Thursday.

Sweat said, if the state Supreme Court rules against her, “then write-ins, here we come.”