MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — A very close primary race in Montgomery County may come down to approximately 100 provisional ballots that still need to be counted.
The county had planned to begin the election certification process for the Democratic primary for County Executive on Friday, but was forced to delay the certification after an error involving missing and unopened ballot envelopes.
"Our precertification audit identified additional provisional ballots to be counted and the Board of Elections will be unable to certify the election as scheduled at its meeting [Friday] afternoon," Montgomery County’s Acting Election Director, Alysoun McLaughlin wrote in a statement Thursday evening.
McLaughlin said that during a precertification audit, her staff inspected a random sampling of ballot envelopes and reconciled the total number of votes cast with the number of ballots scanned.
"We pulled our random sample of empty provisional ballot envelopes for audit and were unable to locate one of the randomly selected envelopes where it should have been," McLaughlin said. "In addition, we were unable to resolve a discrepancy between the number of provisional ballots that our staff had recommended that the Board accept, and the number of ballots scanned.”
McLaughlin said those two things combined prompted a "visual search of folders where provisional ballots had been stored" where her staff found 102 unopened, sealed ballot envelopes that needed to be counted before certification could happen.
The missing ballots were from:
- Precinct 06-10 – 1 ballot
- Precinct 06-11 – 1 ballot
- Precinct 06-13 – 14 ballots
- Precinct 06-14 – 7 ballots
- Precinct 06-15 – 15 ballots
- Precinct 13-56 – 12 ballots
- Precinct 13-57 – 10 ballots
- Precinct 13-58 – 30 ballots
- Precinct 13-59 – 12 ballot
Incumbent Marc Elrich has declared his victory, but challenger David Blair wants a recount. The margin between the two candidates is well within the range for a recount, at just 0.03% or 42 votes, separating Blair from Elrich.
“I apologize for this error and for not identifying it until [Aug. 11], or the remaining ballots could have been counted earlier," McLaughlin said. "I want to emphasize that Maryland’s comprehensive precertification audit was designed to identify issues like this before an election is certified to ensure the accuracy of the results. It worked as intended."
The Board of Elections still plans to meet Friday afternoon to discuss further findings of the audit and to finalize the certification schedule.