Mail-In Votes Discarded, Never Counted in Baltimore Election Due to Error
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Mail-in votes in a local Baltimore, Maryland, election were discarded and not counted due to a ballot error, officials say.
On Tuesday evening, voters went to the polls in Baltimore city elections — including the race in City Council District 1 where incumbent Democrat Zeke Cohen faced a challenge from Democrat Paris Bienert.
The race, though, ended in disarray when a ballot error caused mail-in votes to be thrown out and not counted, according to the Baltimore Sun:
… the State Board of Elections said Maryland’s mail vendor SeaChange failed to correct an error in the ballot title for the council contest. State officials found the error while proofing ballots during the printing process, and requested SeaChange make the change. [Emphasis added]“While the error was corrected in the official voting database, the error was not corrected on a portion of the ballots that were mailed to voters in District 1,” the state Board of Elections said. “Due to this inconsistency, vote by mail ballot styles for District 1 could not be counted properly.” [Emphasis added]
Both Democrat candidates complained about the election error and suggested the state needed to be more transparent about what exactly occurred that led to the mail-in votes going uncounted.
The error impacted the results of the City Council District 1 race and a Baltimore Circuit Court Judge race, state officials told the Baltimore Sun.
Other states have dealt with severe election errors in their quest to expand mail-in voting. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, state officials admitted that duplicate ballots had been mailed out to registered voters ahead of their election.
Likewise, in elections across Wisconsin, at least 30,000 mail-in votes were counted after election day and thousands of mail-in votes were thrown out due to postmark issues, missing voter signatures, and missing witness signatures.
Federal data obtained by Breitbart News has revealed about 28.4 million mail-in ballots sent to individuals on state voter rolls have gone missing since the 2012 election.
Recent data has not shown a compelling public health justification for mail-in voting. In Wisconsin’s recent election, only 52 of more than 400,000 people were confirmed to have contracted the virus after participating either as voters or poll workers, and none of those cases were fatal.
Out of the 413,000 participants, that equals an infection rate below two-hundredths of one percent.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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