The devil is in the details. A lot of convictions for possession are the results of a plea bargain deal, with the defendant pleading guilty to evade the much more serious charges for which he was arrested.
Are we supposed to think that the MD officials have individually examined each of these pardons? Of course not. We are not supposed to think.
I don’t know the rules in MD, but I wonder if restoring voting rights prior to the election to a large number of baseline democrat voters might have been a factor.
At the federal level, almost 100% of marijuana convictions involve a plea deal, or a probation violation, or a parole violation.
At the state level, that percentage is lower, but not hugely lower.
The pardon might be fair for people who got convicted in the 1960s and 1970s, when marijuana laws and enforcement were a lot more strict.