BALTIMORE – The Baltimore City Board of Elections has certified the results of the 2024 primary, ending an election that continued two weeks after Election Day.
The board met Tuesday morning for the certification vote, which was postponed Friday, a tentative date set by state officials for local governments across the state to certify their results. City election officials announced Friday evening that they had to postpone the vote to allow time for mandatory audits. The counting of all ballots in the city was completed on Friday.
There is no penalty for missing Friday’s deadline, although lengthy delays could delay the state board’s certification of results.
More than 96,000 Baltimoreans cast ballots in the primaries, which included near-definitive contests for the presidential candidates, as well as closely contested races for the U.S. Senate candidates and the mayor, city council president and Baltimore City Council. The primaries often decide citywide races in heavily Democratic Baltimore.
The elections for the U.S. Senate and mayor of Baltimore were held on election night. Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks prevailed over Congressman David Trone for the Democratic Senate nomination. Alsobrooks will face former Republican Governor Larry Hogan in the fall. Locally, one-term Mayor Brandon Scott handily defeated former Mayor Sheila Dixon, ending her third attempt to regain office.
However, races for several Baltimore City Council seats continued for nearly two weeks as elections staff continued to count thousands of mail-in ballots and provisional ballots cast by voters at in-person voting locations. The winners of the council races for District 8 in West Baltimore and District 11 in South Baltimore did not announce victory until Thursday when officials had completed the bulk of vote counting. Jermaine Jones, who ousted incumbent Councilman Robert Stokes to represent Central and East Baltimore’s District 12, did not declare victory until Friday evening.
Adding to the tension of the 2024 primaries was an error discovered in the initial Election Day results posted by the Baltimore City Board of Elections. The board reported an additional 584 votes cast on Election Day. The discrepancy, discovered the next day during a routine audit, resulted from city officials failing to upload results from three ballot scanners and twice uploading results from five other precincts, the Maryland State Board said of Elections last week.
The error affected 10 districts and significantly changed the results in the District 11 race. Early results showed Councilman Eric Costello leading by 25 votes, but he widened that lead to 87 votes after Election Day results were redeterminated. After all the ballots were counted, Costello ultimately lost to challenger Zac Blanchard by 48 votes.
Once an election is certified, the clock starts for any candidate who wants to challenge the result. A losing candidate has three days to file a recount request. Such a candidate must pay for the process unless the difference between the top two candidates is less than 0.25% or the winner of the race changes as a result of the recount. The race in District 11, the closest to Baltimore, is not within a 0.25% margin.
The certification also begins a 30-day period for candidates who received public funding in Baltimore to return any unused funds. Blanchard received money from the city’s recently operational fair elections fund, as did mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah and council president candidate Shannon Sneed.
——-
