The National fight started a great organizing fight in 2002 - 18 years ago. MD Legislation began the real fight in 2007. I traveled around in 2002 around the nation including being flown and housed in Florida and helped them form the FLORIDA RIGHTS COALITION a take off from the MARYLAND VOTING RIGHTS RESTORATION COALITION that I was the Visionary and Founder.
Twitter @mhcdc_freedom - Instagram @mhcdc_freedom Visionary & Co-Chair - Lenny Moore Statue Committee Visionary & Founder - Men's Blue Suit Health Awareness Weekend Coppin State University - National Alumni Association Life Member
Empowering Voters. Defending Democracy. League of Women Voters.
Marvin,
Primary elections were NOT supposed to look like this. Long lines, wrong ballots, missing or broken machines, and closed polling places – all while voters demonstrated their determination to exercise their right to vote in the middle of a global pandemic. But the truth is that COVID-19, and a lack of planning and funding, has wreaked havoc on our primary elections this year.
In the last two weeks, we’ve seen voters in D.C., Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and other states waiting in line up to FIVE hours to cast their ballot because of limited in-person voting opportunities, as well as voting equipment that didn’t show up on time or wasn’t functioning. Last week, many voters in Maryland received the wrong absentee ballot, forcing them to vote in person at limited polling locations.
Despite a push for absentee voting this year, it is clear that voters want to cast their ballots in person and need that option. But there simply are not enough election workers or polling places due to the pandemic and last-minute closures.
This is unacceptable.
And we don’t have much time to correct these problems before November.
Ensure voters have the right information through our award-winning election website, VOTE411.org, that has already served more than 1.5 million users this year
Support our plans to recruit and train poll workers and election observers so that we learn from these primary elections and have the right resources in place come November
Reach millions of voters through our election mailings and phone banking to help them navigate in-person and vote-by-mail opportunities
Work with election officials on planning for the fall elections, including public education and combatting misinformation
Activate our network of community-based leaders to mobilize millions of voters
Attn: Baltimore City Voters: If you have already received your ballot, please complete it, sign it, and return it by mail or return it to a drop box:
Mail-In Voting Fill out your ballot using a black pen, sign the oath on the return envelope, and mail it back by June 2. Make sure your ballot is postmarked by June 2. Any ballots postmarked after June 2 will not be counted.
Drop Box Voting Instead of mailing your ballot, you have the option to drop it in a secure ballot drop box between May 21-June 2. There are several drop-box locations throughout Baltimore City. Click hereto see the list of drop-box locations. All ballots must be in the drop box by 8 pm on June 2.
Attn: Baltimore City Voters: If you haveNOTreceived your ballot, you have two options: Request an email ballot by May 29th or go vote in person.
Request a ballot be emailed to you
To request a ballot to be emailed to you, click here. If you request an email ballot, you will need access to a printer. If you choose to print and mail your ballot, you must provide your own envelope and stamp. Remember to postmark your ballot by or before June 2nd.
Email ballots may be dropped off at a designated drop-off location. All drop-off locations are listed here. To have your ballot counted, it must be dropped off by Tuesday, June 2nd at 8 PM.
In-Person Voting Voters may go to a vote center and vote in-person. In-person voting will be available on June 2 from 7 am to 8 pm. There are 6 voting centers throughout Baltimore City. Persons who are not registered and want to vote, may register and vote at any of the voting centers with valid identification. Click hereto see the list of voting centers.
This "Voter Lookup" system will enable you to check your voter status. It will also assist you in updating your information if you recently changed your address or name. You can easily change your party affiliation and more!
2020 PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY VOTE CENTERS
Limited in-person voting will also be available on June 2, 2020, but this is intended for use by voters who are unable to return their mailed ballots or who never received their ballots. Due to the risk posed by COVID-19, please do not use the in-person voting centers if you are able to mark and return your ballot by mail or at a ballot drop-off location.
There will be six in-person voting centers in Baltimore City. They will be open on June 2, 2020, only, from 7:00, am to 8:00 pm. They are located at:
Edmondson High School, 501 N Athol Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21229
University of Maryland at Baltimore Community Engagement Center, 870 W Baltimore Street, MD 21201
Mount Pleasant Church & Ministries, 6000 Radecke Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21206
Dr. Carter G. Woodson School #160, 2501 Seabury Road, Baltimore, MD 21225
Northwestern High School, 6900 Park Heights Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21215
There will also be ballot drop-off boxes at those six locations. And an additional 15 ballot drop-off boxes at the locations listed below. Click to view additional locations: ADDITIONAL BALLOT DROP-OFF BOX LOCATIONS
Ballot drop-off boxes will be open 24/7 beginning on May 21, 2020, or May 30, 2020, through 8:00 pm on Election Day. As a reminder, the oath on the back of the return envelope must still be signed if you are using a ballot drop-off box.
Please check our website and the Maryland State Board of Elections website regularly for updates. And make sure your ballot is postmarked on or before June 2, 2020!
Bill Bramhall's editorial cartoon for Wednesday, April 8, 2020, as more people may have to turn to absentee ballots during the 2020 election amid coronavirus outbreak.(Bill Bramhall/New York Daily News)
For a special election, especially one occurring via mail-in ballots amid a pandemic, some things went surprisingly well in last month’s 7th Congressional District vote. Overall turnout was relatively strong at about 32%, compared to just8%the last time a special election was held for that position — in 1996, when Elijah Cummings was running to take over the seat, which at the time had been vacated by Kweisi Mfume, instead of the other way around. And fewer than 1% of people voted in person (1,009 to be exact; five of them so they could take advantage of same-day registration) out of the 157,075 voters whose ballots had been counted as of Tuesday afternoon.
Those factors appear to bode well for next month’s statewide primary election, both in terms of participation and coronavirus containment. But a deeper look at preliminary data from District 7, which covers parts of Baltimore City and Baltimore and Howard counties, reveals areas of concern that need addressing to ensure most of those who want to vote can.
Of the ballots sent out to the district’s nearly half a million eligible voters, at least 28,608 never made it to their intended recipients, largely because the addresses on file were out of date, according to hand counts of returned ballots performed by the three local elections boards in the district. (The State Board of Elections asked for the counts after learning through inquiries from us that the U.S. Postal Service data they were relying on was way off, both in the number of returned ballots and their supposed destinations.)
In the city alone, more than 20,000 ballots were returned as undeliverable; that’s nearly 10% of the eligible voters registered in Baltimore. Some of them may have moved out of the district, of course, but many are likely just in a new place nearby, and because they didn’t update their address with the elections board, they never got a chance to cast a ballot — at least not from a safe, social distance.
That’s of particular concern, given that the city is already in an underdog position when it comes to elections held by mail. A 2011 study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that urban voters are 50% less likely to vote in a mandatory mail election, and the participation numbers seen here seem to bear that out. In the special election, turnout in Baltimore City was far lower than the counties: 25% compared with 38%. It was also low for the primary on Feb. 4 — way back in pre-pandemic times, when in-person voting was the norm — but the difference was less pronounced: 19% of eligible city voters cast a ballot then, compared with 23% for Baltimore County and 25% for Howard.
The good news is that the same Pew study also found that outreach (at least four separate communications) can overcome some of the negative effects of mandatory mail-in voting for urban voters. And this week, the State Board of Elections launched a $1.1 million education campaign aimed at getting the word out about how, when and where to vote. Elections officials plan to target radio, TV, online news, and social media sites with advertising and information through the effort, which is roughly 30 times larger than the $37,000 initiative undertaken for the 7th District special election.
The bad news is that there’s very little that can be done now to deal with the address issue. The ballots for the June 2 primary have already gone out (Baltimore City’s were mailed Friday).
“It’s a problem,” Nikki Charlson, deputy administrator for the State Board of Elections, acknowledged.
In states where vote-by-mail is frequently used, elections boards will proactively send out interim mailings to try to find the bad addresses before ballots go out, but there wasn’t time to do that here. And so, if primary ballots come back to local elections boards, workers there will try to update the addresses and send out new ballots before June 2, but they only have so much capacity to do that. And if ballots come back at the same rate as they did in the city in the 7th District race — forget about it. So many came back then, that mail carriers would bring them to the Baltimore City Board of Elections in trays, 10 to 15 at a time, said Baltimore Elections Director Armstead B.C. Jones Sr.
If your address is wrong in the system, you can take action on your own to correct it and request a new ballot; the sooner the better. If you’re not sure, you can look it up and make any necessary changes here:voterservices.elections.maryland.gov/VoterSearchor by calling 410-269-2840.
There are also a few things voters who do receive their ballots can do to ensure each is counted. First, send it back on time — postmarked by June 2. More than 1,500 Baltimore City ballots in the 7th District special election were returned too late, according to Mr. Jones. (Note to those without a flag to raise on your mailbox: You can still leave outgoing mail there; your letter carrierwillpick it up.)
Don’t forget to sign and date the oath on the envelope (at least 124 people didn’t do that in the city); don’t worry about postage (none is required); and don’t fail to update your address because you don’t want to be called for jury duty in the city (it happens, Mr. Jones said).
The elections boards have made some mistakes too, notably by putting the wrong date on the primary ballots (they read April 28, which was the date Maryland had originally planned to hold the primary, before coronavirus disrupted daily life) and by accidentally sending a segment of voters in Prince George’s County directions in Spanish only.
Linda Lamone, administrator for the State Board of Elections, says she and her staff and members of the local elections boards are talking nearly every day to “figure out how to do things” and learn from the 7th District results. They’ve also reached out to other states for their best practices.
Given the stakes — our very democracy — we certainly hope they’re doing every last thing they can think of.
The Baltimore Sun editorial board — made up of Opinion Editor Tricia Bishop, Deputy Editor Andrea K. McDaniels and writer Peter Jensen — offers opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. It is separate from the newsroom.
