Maryland held its first statewide mail-in election yesterday (Tuesday, June 2, 2020). Late last night, the MD State Board of Elections announced the first batch of returns in the primaries, and then, at about 2:00 this morning, they took their totals for Baltimore City off of the website, without explanation.

At about 10:00 Wednesday morning, the Board issued a statement saying that there was a “proofing error” in the ballot title for the Democratic primary in the 1st Councilmanic District, and that mail-in ballots in that district could not be counted properly. They are looking into whether or not ballots in the other districts in the city were affected.

The Board had hoped that most voters would mail-in their ballots, but more than 6,200 people did vote in person yesterday at one of six in-person centers around the city. Lines were long at many of those centers. The polls closed to those who were not in line at 8:00, but the last vote wasn’t cast until just after 11:00 last night.

The bottom line is this: we don’t know who the Democratic nominees for Mayor, City Council president, Comptroller and members of the City Council will be, and we may not have those results certified for a while.

Tom's first guest today knows a lot about the electoral scene in our city, and throughout our state. Luke Broadwater is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Yesterday, the New York Times announced that Luke will be joining their Washington Bureau, covering Congress.

Then, Tom is joined by Jayne Miller, veteran investigative reporter for Baltimore's WBALT-TV, for her analysis of what might have gone wrong with Maryland's primary ballot printing and distribution operations for key races, and what the problems portend for future mail-in balloting efforts.

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