Once Maryland voters exercise their right to vote Tuesday, they should expect to exercise something else: patience.
Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis said that while many results will be available on election night, counting mail-in and provisional ballots takes time. And officials face new wrinkles this year, with the challenge of accounting for hundreds of thousands of replacement mail-in ballots and a federal holiday falling during the official canvass period.
The key, he said, is that every ballot, including those postmarked by Tuesday, will be counted.
“On election night, you’re going to get all election night results, you’re going to get early voting results, you’re going to get what we canvassed to date of the mail-in ballots,” DeMarinis said Monday. “Patience is a good word to know because we do count all those ballots. In tighter races, the margin might be more determinative after Election Day than on election night.”
The state has 10 days to finalize its count, but because the Fourth of July holiday will be observed on July 3 this year that deadline will be extended to the next workday, Monday, July 6, DeMarinis said.
Voters who still haven’t turned in a mail-in ballot, can mail it in or hand it in Tuesday. Any ballot postmarked Tuesday will be counted, although it can take several days for local elections offices to receive mailed ballots, which is why DeMarinis urges voters to find the closest drop box. They can also deliver it to their local board of elections until 8 p.m. Tuesday.
“We highly recommend, and I mean I strenuously suggest, everyone use a drop box,” DeMarinis said.
He expressed confidence that the elections officials will be able to handle counting mail-in ballots, after an error was discovered last month that led the state to mail out more than 437,000 replacement ballots. The printer, Taylor Print & Visual Impressions, mailed the wrong primary ballots to some voters based on their party affiliation.
The printer and state election officials were unable to pinpoint exactly how many voters might have received the wrong ballot, but it was decided to replace all the ballots sent by that point.
On June 9, the State Board of Elections unanimously approved guidelines on how local election boards are to treat the original, potentially erroneous, ballots and the replacements when tallying returns.
As of 6 p.m. Sunday, 201,646 mail-in ballots had been received and more than 44,000 of those accepted by elections officials.
“The numbers speak for themselves with over 200,000 ballots returned before Election Day, so that’s fantastic,” said DeMarinis said, who added that individuals trying to create doubt over election results is “more political gamesmanship than actual reality.”
But Del. Robin Grammer Jr. (R-Baltimore County) disagrees. He called the replacement ballots “a fiasco” and said more transparency by the state board is needed, especially when some voters received more than two mail-in ballots.
Grammer said Monday he will be joining a lawsuit with SecuretheVOTEMD against the state for what has happened with mail-in ballots. The suit could be filed as early as Tuesday.
“I don’t think it’s clear which one [ballot] they should be sending, or how the state is going to handle it when multiple are sent,” said Grammer, one of seven delegates who make up the conservative Maryland Freedom Caucus.
‘Things went well’
DeMarinis said “things went well” during eight days of early in-person voting this month. Slightly more than 185,000 people voted in person, just under 5% of the state’s 3.8 million eligible voters this year, according to state data.
That’s a slight improvement over the 2022 gubernatorial election, when 172,364 of the state’s 3.7 million eligible voters voted early.
The biggest turnout came on the last day of early voting Thursday, when slightly more than 46,000 people cast a ballot. Prince George’s County had the highest number of early voters, at 30,367 over the eight days.
DeMarinis said there hasn’t been a deep dive into the numbers, but he acknowledged “contested races are always a driving force” for people to vote.
“The top of the ticket is very important, but those local races affect daily life just as much or more. I’m glad that they [voters] understood that and started to cast their ballot,” he said.
DeMarinis said Monday there’s “always a calm before the storm,” with elections officials double- or triple-checking equipment and other prep work.
“As an election official, we love boring elections,” he said. “We want people to walk in, vote and walk out with their stickers. They say, ‘We cast our ballots. I feel empowered. Great, thank you’ and watch the results.”