Maldon is a constituency[n 1] in Essex represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its recreation in 2010 by Sir John Whittingdale, a Conservative.

Area to the south between the rivers Crouch and Blackwater, including Burnham-on-Crouch, transferred from the South-Eastern Division of Essex.

The northernmost area, including Halstead, and eastern fringes transferred to Saffron Walden and Colchester respectively.

In that year the borough was abolished but the name was transferred to a county division of Essex, which continued with some boundary changes until 1983.

Its first charter dated from the reign of Henry II, and at one time the corporation had the sole right to elect the town's MPs.

It also meant that the town corporation, with the power to create freemen and therefore voters, was in a position to gerrymander elections if it so wished.

However, in the 1750s the government's control of Maldon weakened, and a prominent local Tory, John Strutt, found he had enough influence with the voters to sway elections.

In 1763 one of the sitting MPs, Strutt's friend Bamber Gascoyne, was appointed to the Board of Trade and therefore had to stand for re-election at Maldon.

Gascoyne's opponent, John Huske, accused him of threatening that any freemen working in the customs house who did not vote for him would be dismissed (which, by that time, would have been an illegal threat).

However, the Sheriff could not assume the corporation's function of swearing in new freemen, and Strutt's influence was thus entirely secured against any possibility of new voters being created to outvote him.

However, there was a problem: by the time of the general election of 1807 the number of remaining qualified voters had dwindled to 58, and the constituency was in imminent danger of quite literally dying out.

The eventual Reform Act 1832 extended the borough by adding the neighbouring parish of Heybridge, increasing the population to 4,895; but with only 716 qualified voters under the new franchise its electorate was less than a quarter of what it had previously been.

In 1852, only 40 votes separated first place from fourth, and the second Tory's majority over his Whig opponent was only 6; after the losing candidates petitioned, alleging corruption, the election was declared void[12] and Maldon's right to representation was suspended while a royal commission investigated.

However, no major scandal was uncovered and (unlike some other boroughs similarly investigated at the same period) its right to vote was reinstated and a writ for a new by-election which took place in 1854 was issued.

After 1918, boundary changes added Burnham on Crouch and the surrounding district, but the constituency was still a rural one, with 35% of the occupied male population employed in the agricultural sector at the time of the 1921 census.