Early beginnings

After one day symbolic period of membership in the Liberal Democratic Party (now Order and Justice), which she joined in order to protest the "overly harsh" treatment by opponents of Rolandas Paksas (president at that time, undergoing impeachment), she was a candidate of the Civic Democratic party at the 2009 elections of the European Parliament. In 2015 Lithuanian municipal and 2016 Lithuanian parliamentary elections she participated together with a party "Lithuanian List", though she didn't become its member, and is currently an independent politician.

In 2015 she was elected to the Vilnius City Council.

Member of the Lithuanian Parliament, 2016–2019

In 2016 Maldeikienė was elected to the Seimas in a single-member district constituency of Žirmūnai (Vilnius City). As an MP she was a deputy chair of the Non-attached Members faction and served as a deputy chair of the Committee on European Affairs and member of Committee on Audit, as well as a member in the Freedom Prize Commission and Commission for the Rights of People with Disabilities.^[3]

In June 2018 Maldeikienė affirmed her candidacy in the Lithuanian presidential election of 2019, announcing her electoral programme, composed of 95 theses, as an allusion to Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther that started the Reformation (though she is a Catholic herself). Before considering it, Maldeikienė encouraged Ingrida Šimonytė, another Parliament member, to run for the presidency instead. Šimonytė made this decision in November 2018, upon being granted support from the party of Homeland Union - Lithuanian Christian Democrats (though staying an independent).

In February 2019 Maldeikienė announced she was no longer running for presidency, as she attained her goal of inciting more debates (also expressing disappointment at them being not serious enough).^[4] On her personal website and social media account she started to publish weekly reviews, analyzing campaign actions of the remaining presidential candidates in the light of the developments of national and global politics. With the support by Aušra Maldeikienė continuing,^[5] Ingrida Šimonytė received the highest number of votes of all candidates at the presidential election round in May 2019,^[6] but lost the second round and did not take the office.^[7]

Member of the European Parliament, 2019–present

Later in February 2019 Maldeikienė was registered as a candidate for 2019 European Parliament election by a civic electoral committee "Aušros Maldeikienės traukinys" (Lithuanian "The train of Aušra Maldeikienė").^[8] Such committees made up from a number of willing voters serve as an alternative to the parties in order to enable independent candidates to run for some offices. In April 2019 "Aušros Maldeikienės traukinys" became the first and only electoral list in Lithuania that gathered enough electronic signatures to participate in the European Parliament elections (without the need to rely partly on paper signatures, like all other electoral lists had to). Aušra Maldeikienė's electoral committee won a seat at the European Parliament in May 2019, resulting in her becoming one among 11 of its members elected in Lithuania.^[9] Since her seat in the Seimas became vacant, Aušra Maldeikienė asserted that she will support the candidacy of independent Rasa Žemaitė, who was also in the list of "Aušros Maldeikienės traukinys" in the upcoming September 2019 elections in constituency of Žirmūnai.^[10]

In its electoral programme "Aušros Maldeikienės traukinys" has expressed intentions, if elected, to join one of the firmly pro-European factions, e.g. ALDE, European Greens or a new group based on Emmanuel Macron's "La République En Marche!" if such was to form.^[11] In June 2019 Aušra Maldeikienė announced she's joining European People's Party's (Christian Democrats) group, after evaluating the new transformations of ALDE (merging with other political forces to form Renew Europe) and the possible mismatch of her declared views to theirs, as well as, according to her, being rejected by the European Greens due to the objection of their member from Lithuania, Bronis Ropė.^[12] When the evaluations of the campaign expenses started to appear in the media,^[13] it was ascertained that "Aušros Maldeikienės traukinys" spent only a bit more than EUR 5 thousand for European Parliament elections - much less than all the other electoral lists in Lithuania, which dedicated from EUR 7 thousand to 254 thousand (EUR 95 thousand on average). In a press conference, organized after the elections, Aušra Maldeikienė provided statistics, showing that differently than some other electoral lists, her committee didn't get to use funding for elections from the national budget, instead considerably relying on small (EUR 12 or less) donations from individuals, which it gathered much more than all the remaining electoral lists.^[14]

In July 2019 Maldeikienė started her work as a Member of the European Parliament within the European People's Party's group, however remaining an independent.^[15] She was selected to work in two Committees of the European Parliament: Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs^[16] and Committee on Budgets.^[17] In addition to her committee assignments, she is part of the European Parliament Intergroup on Disability.^[18]

In November 2019 a website "Europos žinios" (European News) was established, publishing articles of Aušra Maldeikienė and other authors. The description of it says "it was created as a result of the promise of Aušra Maldeikienė to bring more of European policy questions into the national public space".^[19]