BALTIMORE (AP) - Former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon says she wants to get a final vote count from last week’s mayoral primary and isn’t conceding an election that was held about a year after Freddie Gray’s death and unrest in the city.
Dixon told WBAL-AM in Baltimore on Tuesday she believes “there’s still a chance” she could win. Provisional and absentee votes are still being counted from last week’s primary.
“The bottom line is that I want to get the official count,” Dixon said.
Aside from candidates, a coalition of concerned citizens and community leaders calling themselves Voters Organized for the Integrity of City Elections sent a letter Tuesday to Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate their complaints against the Baltimore Board of Elections. The coalition also asked the governor to fire the board’s director, Armstead Jones, and replace the five-member board. But Jones said irregularities happen in every election, and that human error should not be confused with malfeasance or ineptitude on the part of the board.
The Maryland State Board of Elections website showed state Sen. Catherine Pugh leading by 3,020 votes on Tuesday, in a crowded Democratic primary with 13 candidates. That’s about 36.8 percent of the vote, compared to 34.4 percent for Dixon.
In addition to votes that remain to be counted, Dixon also noted that votes from eight city precincts were not found until the day after the election. Dixon stopped short of calling for a recount until the official vote is tallied.
Baltimore is heavily Democratic, and the primary has determined the winner of the general election for decades. The city hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1963.
Gray was injured in police custody and died at a hospital in April 2015. Current Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said she decided against running for re-election because she wanted to focus on the city healing.
At a news conference, members of the Voters Organized for the Integrity of City Elections said they have received reports of polling places running out of ballots, campaign workers being allowed to work as election judges, voters being given the wrong district ballots and former felons now on probation, who were this year granted the right to vote, being told they were not allowed to cast ballots.
“This is an infringement upon the citizens’ rights to effectively be able to participate in the electoral process,” said the Rev. Cortly “C.D.” Witherspoon, a community activist. “We are here today to express our righteous indignation and to make the appeal for the governor to intervene on behalf of the citizens of this city. We’ve heard about egregious acts such as candidates not on the voting rolls, polling places opening late, polling judges not being trained.”
Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Hogan, said administration officials have not seen the letter and would not comment until it is reviewed.
“The governor supports fair and equitable elections and believes that any election process that takes place in the state of Maryland needs to be completely free of any kind of administrative irregularities or fraud,” Mayer said. “There’s a longstanding legal process in the state that involves local boards of elections and possibly a state prosecutor, if complaints or allegations warrant it or reach that level.”
The appeal comes on the heels of a request for an emergency injunction filed by Baltimore attorney J. Wyndal Gordon to extend the hours of city polling places after some opened an hour late. A Baltimore judge extended the hours of four polling places on the day of the primary.
However, the letter to Hogan is much more wide-reaching in its allegations of mismanagement of the electoral process than Gordon’s earlier motion.
“This is not just about polls opening late or people getting misinformation about ballots, but the cumulative effect of all the irregularities that leads us to the conclusion that we cannot rely upon the election result,” Gordon said. “In the totality of the irregularities of this information we cannot rely upon the election results because there are too many questions left unanswered.”
Jones said irregularities “should not happen,” but that in any election there’s bound to be hiccups and this one was no different.
“The only time it ever becomes an issue is when there’s a close election,” he said, adding that he thinks the blowback is being spearheaded by Dixon supporters. “I have to open 206 buildings. I can’t control 206 buildings and 2,000 judges. Of course, we do our best to put on a good, fair, open election, and we’ve done that in this office since I’ve been here.”
___
Witte reported from Annapolis, Maryland.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.