TOWSON, MD—A grassroots effort to expand the Baltimore County Council failed to secure a spot on the November ballot after the group was unable to collect the required signatures, organizers say.

The Vote4More campaign, led by Linda Dorsey-Walker and backed by County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., aimed to add four seats to the current seven-member council. The campaign fell short of the 10,000 valid signatures needed to place the expansion on the ballot.

Despite submitting 10,275 signatures initially, nearly 3,000 of them were disqualified as invalid. The group also submitted an additional 1,428 signatures on the final day, but those signatures also did not meet state code requirements, which mandate that signees include their full names as listed on voter rolls and the date of signing.

A separate and more modest expansion effort is set to appear on the November ballot, led by Council Chair Izzy Patoka. That proposal would add two seats to the council and also reduce the governor’s power to appoint Board of Education members, shifting some appointments to the new council members.

This article was written with the assistance of AI and reviewed by a human editor.