The Baltimore County Council is divided over a political map, and it’s muddying the waters for voters who will soon decide whether to expand the council.

Council Democrats needed Republican votes to get the proposed expansion of the council from seven to nine seats on the November ballot. So they cut a deal.

Republicans were concerned Democrats would use the expansion to strengthen their 4-3 hold on the council so a redrawn nine district map was included in the expansion legislation the Republicans could accept.

Now Democratic state legislators want the Council to throw out that map.

At a public hearing Tuesday, Republican Councilman Todd Crandell said the Democrats don’t like that the map is politically fair.

“Why do you think that delegates from Annapolis are here today and testifying?” Crandell asked. Because they’re used to getting their way. That’s why.”

Crandell and other Republican Council members chastised the state legislators for weighing in on their redistricting process, when the Maryland General Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats, has a history of gerrymandering.

But Del. Aletheia McCaskill, a Western Baltimore County Democrat, took issue with that.

“We all really should be working collectively, for the benefit of constituents,” McCaskill told the Council.

Democratic Councilman Pat Young, who has proposed legislation to toss out the map, said it never should have been drawn because it did not follow the county’s redistricting process.

Young said the drawing of the map “lacked public input, lacked the ability for members of this Council to engage in a conversation about what redistricting looks like and should look like.”

Opponents of the map have threatened legal action. In a letter to the County Council, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said the map violated the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it was “not adopted through the County’s ordinary redistricting process, which is undertaken through involvement of an appointed redistricting commission and includes extensive opportunity for public review, comment, and analysis.”

Eleven Democratic state legislators from Baltimore County gave their support in the letter.

But at Tuesday’s meeting, Councilman Crandell asked the body’s legislative counsel, Thomas Bostwick, if the Council acted illegally when it passed the legislation with the map.

“No,” Bostwick replied.

Voters will start getting mail-in ballots in a couple of weeks. They likely won’t know if the map that currently is tied to the Council expansion question will be tossed out. A second public hearing is set for October 1 and a vote is scheduled for October 7.

Democratic Councilman Mike Ertel, who represents Towson, appears to hold the crucial vote on whether the map is repealed.

Ertel previously had said he thought the map-repeal legislation was divisive and that he did not support it in its current form.

At Tuesday’s hearing, he called Young’s legislation “an unnecessary bill.”

The original Council expansion legislation allows the Council to make changes to the map.

Ertel said, “We are not saying that the map that was placed out there is written in stone.”