Washington Post: Maryland prepares for unprecedented test of mail-in voting amid pandemic

04.27.2020 / By Jenna Portnoy and Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post: Maryland prepares for unprecedented test of mail-in voting amid pandemic

The Maryland chapter of the watchdog group Common Cause will send scouts to the voting centers to make sure voters are following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and Hogan’s orders to wear masks and remain at least six feet apart. Activists are allowed, as usual, to campaign as long as they remain at least 100 feet from the polling center. Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause in Maryland, said she worries people who didn’t receive ballots will crowd voting centers, defeating their purpose. “The concern is whether we will see people going to these in-person voting centers, which is what the board [of elections] was trying to avoid in the first place,” she said.

The late Maryland congressman Elijah E. Cummings’s 92-year-old mother begged him, as she lay dying, to protect the fundamental right to vote above all else, he told a congressional committee last year.

A major test of government’s ability to do just that amid the coronavirus pandemic will play out Tuesday as officials carry out the state’s first mostly mail-in election.

There will be only one race on the ballot: the special election to decide who will complete the remaining eight months of Cummings’s term representing the 7th District, which includes parts of Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County.

The election will also help officials work out any kinks in the process before the large-scale primary on June 2, which will include the presidential race and crowded contests for Baltimore mayor, City Council seats and congressional offices. …

The Maryland chapter of the watchdog group Common Cause will send scouts to the voting centers to make sure voters are following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and Hogan’s orders to wear masks and remain at least six feet apart.

Activists are allowed, as usual, to campaign as long as they remain at least 100 feet from the polling center.

Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause in Maryland, said she worries people who didn’t receive ballots will crowd voting centers, defeating their purpose.

“The concern is whether we will see people going to these in-person voting centers, which is what the board [of elections] was trying to avoid in the first place,” she said.

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