BALTIMORE — Elections workers across Maryland began counting thousands of mail-in ballots Thursday morning, two days after the primary election.
By law, the ballot counting process could not begin any earlier after Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed a measure to do so out of concerns surrounding election security.
In Baltimore City, elections chief Armstead Jones said things were going smoothly. He said elections workers would likely work until 6 p.m. each day and may take a break on Sunday.
“Normally this process can go three weeks, but I don’t think it will go three weeks because of the low turnout,” Jones told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren.
Jones noted that mail-in ballots postmarked by 8 p.m. Tuesday can still be counted. He said contested ballots will be set aside and counted on Monday afternoon.
“I see no integrity problems,” Jones said.
The city elections chief also addressed the 12 missing flash drives that were later recovered, saying the hard drives with the vote totals were always accessible to elections workers.
“The flash drive issues in most cases will happen every election,” he said. “We had brand new judges in most of all of our precincts. In 396 precincts, we had 12 flash drives that did not come in until the next evening. We had all 12 of them.”
Jones speculated that judges either left the flash drives in the scanner or placed them in the wrong bag.
“If we can’t recover the flash drive, all we have to do is go back to the scanner and put in a new flash drive and the information will upload or we can rerun the ballots,” Jones said.
Many candidates or their representatives were on hand for the vote-counting process.
Ivan Bates, a Democrat who is challenging incumbent Marilyn Mosby in the Baltimore City state’s attorney race, said the process was like waiting for a jury to deliberate.
“You make your case, you’ve done your closing, it’s in the jury’s hands,” Bates said. “At the end of the day, they’re ready to make their resolution and have it announced.”
The first of the mail-in ballot returns show Bates had widened his lead over Mosby, but the race remains too close to call.
In the tight race for Baltimore City sheriff, Sam Cogen also expanded his lead as of Thursday afternoon.
“There’s absolutely nothing we can do right now but watch the process,” Cogen told WJZ.
In the Democratic primary for governor, current frontrunner Wes Moore’s representative said they “take nothing for granted.”
“We believe that every vote needs to be counted and every voice needs to be heard,” Moore campaign spokesperson Brian Jones said. “That’s not just a central piece of our democracy, it’s the way Wes Moore has run this campaign.”
He declined to comment on Gov. Hogan’s disclosure that he will not support the presumptive Republican nominee, Dan Cox.
Sean Naron, a spokesperson for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Perez, criticized the governor for delaying the vote count but said the campaign remains patient as the votes are counted.
“It’s clear this is a two-person race between Tom Perez and Wes Moore,” Naron said. “We’re encouraged by the energizing progress we’ve seen across our state. We continue to get the dominant share of votes in Montgomery County.”
Baltimore County has a live stream of its ballot counting process. Click here to watch.