MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. -- WUSA9 is learning about an important problem discovered by election staff in Maryland. It has to do with some 5,000 voters potentially being able to vote twice.
An official with the Maryland State Board of Elections working to resolve this issue confirmed two things:
- This issue is due to human error in the early voting period
- It has nothing to do with the ballots casted then. Those early votes were counted.
The problem: the state did not exactly know who voted early.
This past weekend, Maryland State Board of Elections staff discovered about half of the early voters, or around 5,500 people, had their ballots counted but the poll books did not reflect that they had voted.
This means they could’ve voted twice in this year’s hotly contested midterm elections.
WUSA9 first learned about the issue from an email shared with the station. In it, the Montgomery County Election Director says “The instructions provided by the State Board are highly unrealistic with the number of voters in line at 7 a.m.”
The email outlined a county plan to give election judges 15 minutes before polls open on Tuesday, to upload the some 3,000 voter names missing from Montgomery County alone.
A Montgomery County BOE Spokesperson, Gilbert Zelaya, assured WUSA9 they could accomplish this before 7 a.m. The county broke-down the list by precinct.
When WUSA9 asked the state about this, the Maryland State Board of Elections Deputy Administrator was not pleased. Deputy Admin. Nikki Charlson told WUSA9 over the phone, they did not give a directive to upload information.
She confirmed the state knows who these 5,500 people are and said it’s a matter of poll workers checking certain Early Voter lists provided for Tuesday, when they check-in Election Day voters.
We asked for the exact directions. Below is a copy:
Early Voting_EPB_Check in Step 11032018 by WUSA9-TV on Scribd
Charlson said if an early voter show-up to a polling location on Tuesday, they could be given a provisional ballot that to fill-out that will not be counted later if they person is found on the early voting list.
Charlson wrote in a statement:
“Election officials throughout the State are ready for a busy day of voting tomorrow. The accuracy of the voting equipment has been confirmed, pollworkers have been trained, and procedures are in place to facilitate vote while ensuring the integrity of the voting process. These procedures include a quick check to verify that voters who already voted are not allowed to vote again.”
