Early voting begins in Maryland primary; high-profile races include Baltimore mayor, US Senate

BALTIMORE — Early voting for Maryland’s presidential primary election begins Thursday, and elections officials are preparing to implement a new method of quashing misinformation about the deluge of mail-in ballot requests they received this year.

“The weather is complying nicely for the week ahead for early voting,” said Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis. “We’re prepared and moving forward with it.”

There are 97 early voting centers across the state — eight of them are in Baltimore City. All early voting centers will be open for Marylanders on May 2-9 from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. May 14 is the official date for the primary election.

One change Maryland voters will see this election cycle concerns provisional ballots.

In an effort to collect more data for education campaigns, to dispel misinformation about the mail-in voting process and catch any potential instances of voter fraud, the State Board of Elections expanded a question on Maryland provisional ballots to ask for more specific reasons people are voting that way.

Previously, the form only asked if people had already voted or if they requested a mail-in ballot. In an interview Tuesday, DeMarinis said the question was framed “too general” in prior elections.

Now, when voters who requested but never received a mail-in ballot fill out provisional ballots, they will be asked if they requested a mail-in ballot to be delivered through the U.S. Postal Service, printed from the internet or via fax. It will ask a similar question to voters who received their requested mail-in ballot, but instead opted to vote in person.

Additionally, the new provisional ballots will record information regarding voters who didn’t request a mail-in ballot, but their local board of elections recorded that someone else did and turned it in on their behalf. DeMarinis said that, in those instances, those ballots will be forwarded to the state prosecutor’s office for investigation.

At the top of the primary election ballot are choices for Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, which are presumed to be President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, respectively.

Across the state, Marylanders will select their top candidates to represent them in the U.S. Senate. Democratic voters will select their top choice among a pool of 10 candidates, with U.S. Rep. David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks leading the pack.

A poll from The Baltimore Sun, FOX45 and the University of Baltimore conducted April 7-10 showed the multimillionaire Trone leading Alsobrooks by 19 percentage points among a sample of likely Democratic voters. Whoever prevails will likely face former Gov. Larry Hogan, who is the presumptive Republican nominee among the party’s seven candidates still in the race.

Marylanders across the state’s eight congressional districts also will vote for their party’s nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Most contested will be the races to replace U.S. Reps. John Sarbanes and Dutch Ruppersberger, both of whom announced they would not seek reelection in 2024, and Trone, who is giving up his incumbency in the 6th Congressional District for his Senate run.

Baltimore City voters will choose their candidates for mayor, city council president, and their council district representative.

There are a dozen Democratic candidates in the mayoral race, which is slated to be a toss-up between incumbent Mayor Brandon Scott and former Mayor Sheila Dixon.

The poll conducted for The Sun, FOX45 and the University of Baltimore early last month found Scott, who polled at 38%, with a slight lead over Dixon, who polled at 35%, in a rematch of the 2020 Democratic primary, when Scott prevailed over Dixon by just over 3,000 votes.

Democratic voters in the City Council president race will have their pick among incumbent Council President Nick Mosby, Councilman Zeke Cohen and former Councilwoman Shannon Sneed, with polled voters favoring Cohen by a large margin.

According to DeMarinis, the 2024 primary is likely to break Maryland’s current record for mail-in ballot requests. He anticipates that requests during the presidential election in November, which typically draws the most voters, will “definitely far surpass” the total requests for the primary.

Requests for mail-in ballots during the 2022 election reached over 642,000, which DeMarinis called “the most requests we’ve ever had.”

“At this rate here, it looks like we’re going to exceed that request, and I think the primary election will probably have the most mail-in voting in Maryland history,” he said.

As of Monday evening, the board of elections had sent out 578,395 mail-in ballots and received 178,811.

Voters can request mail-in ballots until May 10. Completed ballots sent back to local election boards must be postmarked by May 14 at the latest. Mail-in ballots also can be submitted via ballot drop boxes.

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