BALTIMORE COUNTY — Since Friday’s ruling from the state’s highest court, Baltimore County is now joining Baltimore City in their plans to count mail-in ballots earlier than election day on November 8th.
Last month, the State of Maryland's board of elections filed a lawsuit challenging a law that requires the state to wait until 2 days after an election to count mail-in ballots.
On Friday, The state’s highest court sided with the state's board of elections that mail-in ballots can be counted as soon as this month.
Sending election officials in Baltimore county into a shuffle.
“It was just a little bit of working in concert with the county administration who’s been great to find a location so we’re able to complete all of the the tasks and required items that need to happen before Election Day,” said Ruie Lavoie, the director of Baltimore County Board of Elections.
She says up until Wednesday, they had no space to conduct election judge training and count mail-in ballots before Election Day, but they changed this initial arrangements.
“We will conduct at least 2 days of canvassing prior to Election Day here at the office,” she told WMAR 2 News.
County officials relocated those operations to a community center just a few minutes away to do what Baltimore city already had planned to do following Friday’s ruling.
“The purpose of doing it was so that once we got through the election that we were inundated and take months, month and a half of more and perhaps in some races come up with a winner,” said Armstead Jones Baltimore City’s Board of Elections Director.
In court the state Board of elections called the move an 'unexpected emergency' that risks the state missing statutory deadlines following the general election, in getting elected officials into their new roles
Making those changes early on for Baltimore county officials they say is a last minute shuffle that they expect to pay off on the back end.
“Being able to canvass is a blessing because we will be able to most definitely meet our goal of certifying on November 18th regardless of a the number of ballots that we receive and the number of pages our ballot is,” Lavoie said.
Some mail in ballots have already been mailed out on October 5th while election offices both in the county and city have began to see returns.
The county has received about 4000 over the holiday weekend and the city about 530 so far.
October 18 is the last day to register to vote and November 1st the last day to request a ballot by mail.
