Haire’s lead over Pittman down since weekend

About 2,000 mail-in ballots counted over the weekend reduced Republican County Council member Jessica Haire’s lead over Democratic incumbent Steuart Pittman in the race for Anne Arundel County executive to about 5,000 votes.

Haire now leads Pittman, 84,323 votes to 79,265 votes with thousands more ballots yet to be counted.

Ballot canvassing resumed Monday morning at the Anne Arundel Board of Elections headquarters in Glen Burnie. Workers counted around 7,000 email ballots, officials said. Results of the count were not available by press time Monday evening.

An email ballot is an option available to every voter, said Richard Siejack, deputy director of the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections. It often can be an appealing option to people who are overseas and want to ensure they receive their ballots on time. More than 11,600 people requested their ballot in this format, according to a State Board of Election report.

Once a voter requests the ballot emailed to them online, they get a link to a virtual ballot, select their candidates and then print out it out and mail it back to the board.

On Monday, volunteers copied the email ballots from printer paper to cardstock so they could be properly scanned and tabulated. Siejack said it’s a significantly slower process than scanning in regular mail-in ballots.

The remaining mail-in and provisional ballots will be counted throughout the week with roughly 15,000 mail-in ballots being counted on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and around 7,500 provisional ballots counted Wednesday, according to Siejack.

After a broken ballot scanner caused delays Thursday, initial returns from 11,200 ballots showed incumbent Pittman had shrunk his deficit to fewer than 6,000 votes. On Saturday, election officials scanned an additional 1,946 ballots, three-quarters of which favored Pittman.

As of Sunday, the county had received more than 59,000 mail-in ballots, of which about 46,000 still need to be counted.