BALTIMORE — Tuesday marks two weeks since the Maryland Primary Election and the election results were just finalized on Monday.
This year we've seen a handful of voting issues, from delayed ballots to long lines at voting centers, but the biggest issue, misprinted ballots that were mailed to thousands of voters, delayed the election result process. Staff members worked long hours to fix this issue, taking all the votes from the misprinted ballots and putting them on scannable ballots.
State leaders and voting rights activists have called for the State Board of Elections Administrator Linda Lamone and Baltimore City Elections Director Armstead Jones to step down. Jones stressed that he did nothing wrong. He says they caught the misprinting issue and notified the state, but the state failed to fix the problem.
Now, Lamone and the State Board of Elections Chair Michael Cogan have been called to discuss these issues.
Tuesday afternoon, these two will testify at the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs and House Ways & Means Committees hearing. They're also inviting local election administrators, specifically the Baltimore City Election Director, to testify as well.
This committee says they appreciate their hard work to handle the change caused by COVID-19, having to switch mainly to vote by mail. However, they're concerned with some of the reports about the implementation and aftermath of the election. They stressed that the people of Maryland deserve to have confidence in the election process.
The committee has several questions for these leaders. These questions are related to their maintenance procedures, their process to determine the number of voting centers, their outreach to undeliverable addresses and collaboration with local boards of elections. The committee also wants to learn more about the mailing process and the relationship with the mail vendor, SeaChange. There have been some issues with this company. The Baltimore City office received ballots that were supposed to go to South Carolina, who also use SeaChange.
This virtual hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m.
Stay with WMAR-2 News for updates.
