Maryland’s Green Party, Working Class Party lost Tuesday — but scored a victory

Maryland’s third-party candidates for governor didn’t come anywhere close to winning this year’s election. But the Green and Working Class parties won something else: enough votes to make it easier to get their candidates on the next ballot.

Going into the election, the Green Party gubernatorial ticket of Andy Ellis and running mate Owen Silverman Andrews understood that they had little chance of winning.

But they had another goal: get a large enough share of the vote to keep the Green Party officially recognized by state elections officials.

As final ballots are still being counted, Democrat Wes Moore won with nearly 63% of the vote, followed by Republican Dan Cox with 33%. But Ellis tallied 2.06% of the vote as of Thursday afternoon. Fellow third-party candidate Cathy White of the Working Class Party, has earned 1.97% of the vote.

That’s well beyond the 1% threshold that third parties like the Green Party and Working Class Party need to maintain recognized status from the Maryland State Board of Elections. Neither party has hit that mark in recent elections.

When a party’s vote share for the highest office on the ballot drops below 1%, the party loses recognition, and it takes 10,000 signatures from registered voters to restore status.

That’s what the Maryland Green Party has had to do over and over again — a time-intensive effort that takes energy away from party-building activities.

“Securing ballot access gives the Maryland Green Party the space to identify, train and support new candidates in multiple races throughout Maryland,” Ellis said in a statement.

This year, Maryland’s Green Party ran candidates for Congress, the General Assembly, Howard County executive and Charles County commissioner. The Working Class Party also ran candidates for the General Assembly.

Ellis said his “scrappy, DIY campaign” was focused on “showing up for working class Marylanders” instead of dictating an agenda to voters as the two major parties often do.

This year’s vote total represents a significant improvement for both the Green Party and the Working Class Party compared with recent elections.

In 2022, the Green Party ticket of Nancy Wallace and running mate Patrick Elder earned 0.73% of the vote, and the Working Class Party ticket of David Harding and White, earned 0.86%.

In 2018, the Green Party ticket of Ian Schlakman and Annie Chambers earned 0.5% of the vote, and the Working Class Party did not have a ticket.