Prince George's County Ballot Questions 2026: Ten Questions Await Voters Tuesday, Including Five Charter Amendments

Prince George's County voters heading to the polls on Tuesday will find more than candidates on their ballots. The county is putting ten questions to voters: five charter amendments, lettered A through E, and five bond issues. The charter questions reach into how the county taxes, how its council is composed, how its maps are drawn, how it signs contracts and how it settles labor disputes.

Question A asks whether the county may impose additional taxes and fees on businesses deemed to have an adverse impact on community health, safety and welfare or on county economic development - tobacco and liquor stores and self-storage units among them - without returning to voters for direct approval, as the charter currently requires for most tax and fee increases. The question follows the County Council's 9-to-2 vote this spring for a new $5,000 annual fee on the owners of liquor stores, tobacco stores, gun stores and consolidated storage businesses. County Executive Aisha Braveboy did not sign that legislation but declined to veto it, and a group of business owners - 50 plaintiffs, including Greenway Liquors in Greenbelt - is suing the county over the fee. Question B would eliminate the council's two at-large positions effective December 2030, reducing the council from 11 members to nine; the at-large seats were created in 2018 and have been criticized as term-limit workarounds, while supporters say they give every resident three representatives to turn to.

Question C would require the council to make any changes to the Redistricting Commission's plan by bill rather than by resolution - writing into the charter the 2022 court ruling, in the case that followed the council's contested 2021 map, that redistricting changes require a bill the county executive can veto. Question D would give the County Purchasing Agent full signature authority to execute contracts, agreements and purchase orders, and would let the county partner with other public entities - a broader term than public jurisdictions - to buy goods and services; an executive order last year already granted much of that signing authority, and the amendment would put it in the charter itself. Question E would allow protective-service employees - police, firefighters and corrections officers - to submit disputed labor issues to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service as an additional option alongside the American Arbitration Association when no contract is reached by March 1 of an expiring contract's year. Maryland voters who are not yet registered can still register at an early voting center or at their assigned polling place on Election Day with a document proving where they live.