Tech Glitch Delays Results in 5 Maryland Counties, Could Impact Close Local Races

Maryland’s largest counties are working to overcome a technology glitch that’s delayed reporting of full Election Day results. The state hopes to have all of the preliminary numbers posted on its website by the end of the day Thursday.

Final returns from Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, among others, are still missing due to delays in transferring Tuesday’s in-person voting returns, according to Maryland Board of Elections Deputy Administrator Nikki Charlson.

With heavy mail-in ballot and early voting, the final results aren’t expected to change the outcome of high-profile races but could affect local judicial and school board races.

When in-person voters scan their ballot in to be counted, it’s recorded electronically on a thumb drive in every scanner. The larger counties had more vote centers and more scanners at each. For security reasons, elections officials drive those thumb drives to the elections office to be uploaded.

In a briefing Wednesday, Charlson said elections officials encountered delays, which tripled the time it took to upload some results to the state’s central voting system database.

The jurisdictions also included Anne Arundel County, Baltimore County, and Baltimore City. Each only uploaded a fraction of their Election Day results Tuesday night and were working to update those results Wednesday.

As of Tuesday evening, Montgomery County officials had only transferred election results from 42 scanner machines out of a total of 292,  Charlson said. Prince George’s was only able to transfer data from six out of 440 scanners in the county.

“We have Election Day results for the 19 other counties and we have partial results for four of those five,” Charlson said.

Charlson said the continued uploading of Election Day results should not impact the scanning and counting of mailed ballots, which is scheduled to resume on Thursday.

The state has already received at least 1.3 million mailed ballots but, as of Wednesday, had not calculated how many were still waiting to be counted. Mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day have until Nov. 13 to arrive at Maryland election offices to be counted.

Source: NBC Washington