Still up in the air
Races for governor, county executive, council could hang in balance for days With lower turnout on primary day, county reports smooth sailing at polls
Voters trickled into polling places across Anne Arundel County for primary election day Tuesday, motivated by competitive races for governor, concerns over tax increases and plain old civic duty.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. at dozens of locations throughout the county where voters chose Democratic and Republican candidates for governor, county executive, County Council and numerous other down-ballot and federal races.
Despite issues in other jurisdictions, Anne Arundel County did not see any delays in opening over 140 precincts, county election officials said, as voters returned last-minute ballots to drop boxes before polls closed.
Preliminary results weren’t available by press time. A significant portion of ballots won’t be counted until Thursday with additional canvass dates scheduled for July 27 and 29. That means results could be delayed by days or even weeks.
Close races, including both Democratic and Republican nomination contests for governor, might be impossible to call for quite a while, election workers and state officials warn.
Voters at the Linthicum Elementary polling place said they turned out to vote for the person they hope will become the next governor of Maryland.
Other races on the ballot include those for state attorney general and comptroller, U.S. representatives and senators, and the Maryland Senate and House of Delegates.
Democrats have a choice among nine candidates vying to succeed Republican Gov. Larry Hogan this fall. The crowded field is led by Comptroller Peter Franchot, former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez and former nonprofit leader Wes Moore. Republicans are choosing among four candidates for governor in a contentious race led by former state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz and Frederick County Del. Dan Cox.
Rose Sunderland, a retired Linthicum resident, and her husband, Warren, both voted for Franchot, a four-term comptroller and former delegate.
The Democratic gubernatorial primary has been “concerning because of all the hype you hear on the radio and TV,” said Sunderland, 84. “You have to cut through all the ‘bs’ and figure it all out for yourself.”
In the Republican county executive race, five candidates will face off: Edgewater Council member Jessica Haire, former Annapolis delegate and alderman Herb McMillan, former County Council member John Grasso, corporate recruiter Chris Jahn and engineer Fernando Berra. Democratic incumbent County Executive Steuart Pittman is unopposed.
Bonnie Rice, an 84-year-old Linthicum resident who has voted in nearly every election since she turned 18 in the mid-1950s, said her primary motivation to vote was that she opposes tax increases. While she declined to say who her favored candidates were, Rice said she voted for a straight Republican ticket.
“I’m here because it’s an election day,” she said, grinning as she strode out of her polling place at Linthicum Elementary, adding that voting was the smoothest process she had seen in years. “There was no line, and then they had someone waiting at the door for me.”
Taxes also concerned Joy Perez, 47, a lifelong Republican voter from Riva who turned out with her two sons and husband to support Republican candidates. She voted for Haire for county executive after being disappointed by Pittman’s leadership, she said.
“We felt like he raised taxes after he swore he wouldn’t,” Perez said, adding that she liked that Haire is a mom. “I feel like she is more in touch with the family side of things.”
Perez, who drives a school bus for Anne Arundel County school system, said the county’s school bus driver shortage affects her directly, and suggested the county needed to improve drivers’ benefits and salaries.
“It’s an actual crisis and they’re downplaying it,” she said.
Exercising their civic duty motivated Pat French and her husband, Dave, both 67, of Severna Park.
“If you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” said Pat French, after casting her vote at Severna Park High School. She said she first voted in 1972, and has been voting in every election since. Her husband has been voting since 1973.
Voters at American Legion Post #141 in Annapolis were supporting candidates who would fight for what they cared about, such as affordable housing, better resources for homeless residents and improving local roads.
Turnout numbers at four polling places throughout Anne Arundel showed more Republican voters cast their ballots Tuesday — a common trend since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of mail-in voting.
About 11,500, or 3.8%, of the county’s 303,000 eligible Democrats and Republicans cast ballots during eight days of early voting, which ended Thursday. Fewer county residents took advantage of early voting this year than in 2018, when about 6% of voters did so.
About 12,000 people voted by mail or returned their ballots to one of 32 drop boxes, according to unofficial data from the county’s board of elections received Friday, meaning about 8% of eligible Anne Arundel voters have cast their ballots. Overall turnout in the 2018 primary was 20%.
“It’s relieved some of the pressure on us,” Jacquie Cowan, a longtime election judge, said of the growing trend of residents to vote early or return their ballot by mail. Cowan served as the chief judge at Severna Park High School on Tuesday morning. She said her polling place had a full slate of judges who worked well together. “It’s been very nice and smooth so far.”
Election judges had differing preliminary accounts of this year’s primary day turnout. Kevin Sharpe, the chief judge at Linthicum Elementary School, said he’d seen “a little more [turnout] than we’ve seen in the past” by 11 a.m. Tuesday.
“It’s not crowded, it’s just been steady,” Sharpe said.
John Zajic, a chief election judge at the Riva Fire Department, said this year’s election process was much smoother than the 2020 general election, the first time he was
an election judge,partly because polling sites were consolidated that year due to the pandemic.
“Traffic is lower,” Zajic said. “We don’t have cascading things happening all at once so the little things that could go wrong when it was the general election and we had large volumes of people [are easier to manage].”
As Zajic spoke, a light flickered in the room and he had the other judges check each machine plugged into a power source to ensure no machines had restarted.
After hours of standing in front of Crofton Elementary School waving a sign supporting Republican District 7 candidate Cailey Locklair, voter Kristine Vander Wall still had a smile on her face despite the summer heat.
Vander Wall met Locklair when the candidate knocked on her door in Crofton a few months ago. From then on Vander Wall was a devoted supporter, in part because of her promise to work with Democrats if elected.
“She has a lot of business savvy,” Vander Wall said. “I don’t want someone who is so far right they don’t know how to work with Democrats.”
A self-proclaimed moderate Republican, Vander Wall said she’s also supporting Haire for county executive, and though she liked McMillan, she wanted to see a woman lead the county and more Republican women in office in Maryland in general, she said.
While jurisdictions throughout the Baltimore area reported shortages of election judges, Anne Arundel County had enough judges to staff all 195 polling locations, said
Richard Siejack, deputy board of elections director of Anne Arundel County.
Siejack said he couldn’t put an exact number on how short the county was on judges for election day, but said, “We have enough to make sure we have all the precincts covered.”
Earlier this year, the board announced it needed to hire an additional 650 Republican judges.
Only Democrats and Republicans are eligible to vote in this primary as Maryland is a closed primary state, leaving out the roughly 105,000 Anne Arundel County residents registered as third-party or unaffiliated voters who will be eligible to vote in the general election Nov. 8.
Election day was delayed by three weeks due to a series of lawsuits related to the redrawing of county, state and federal district maps, which forced the State Board of Elections to push back the primary slated for June 28.