Once again, the Baltimore City Board of Elections under the leadership of Armstead Jones missed an opportunity to get it right. Despite record low voter turnout, the ability to keep track of our votes seems to have eluded Mr. Jones and his team. Until early evening a day after the 2022 Primary Election, thumb drives containing voting information from 12 voter precincts remained missing and unaccounted for. While we rejoice the recovery of these thumb drives, we can only hope the numbers of votes reported from those drives are identical to the numbers they contained when they went missing a day earlier.
The lapse in procedure that led to the lost data might be overlooked if this had been a unique, one-of-a-kind occurrence. However, in 2020, more votes were cast in some precincts than the number of registered voters. Be suspicious anytime you hear "102% voter turnout." And in 2016, after a lengthy delay in certifying the vote, the entire ballot was decertified, nearly causing Maryland Democrats and Republicans to forfeit the seating of their delegations at their respective national conventions.
Three significant blunders in six years. We demand that voting machine data be timely retrieved, that every legitimately cast vote be timely counted, and that no race be called until all lawfully cast votes are tabulated. To do anything less de-values and disenfranchises tens of thousands of city voters in our city.
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