The number of locations where voters could cast their ballots during July’s primary decreased from the last statewide election in 2018, according to state data. It’s unclear how many, if any, counties will bump the number of polling places back up for November’s general election. Though the change statewide was relatively small at about 3%, some counties saw significant declines.
Howard County, for example, lost nearly a third of its polling places, and Somerset County had the largest decline, at 45%.
The decrease violates a new state law the legislature passed in the spring. The apparent disregard for that law was at the core of legislators’ frustration during a House Ways and Means Committee meeting Thursday.
“There’s just inherently something wrong with the legislature passing a law and then the local boards just deciding not to follow the law,” Chairwoman Vanessa Atterbeary, a Howard County Democrat, said in an interview after the meeting.
The law requires local election boards to have at least as many in-person polling places in the 2022 primary and general elections as were available in 2018. But as state and local election officials told Atterbeary’s committee Thursday morning, that’s easier said than done.
State Board of Elections deputy administrator Nikki Charlson laid out a few reasons for what officials call polling place “consolidation.”
“We are fortunate that many of our local boards have access to and use senior centers or assisted-living facilities or continuing-care retirement communities as polling places,” Charlson offered as one possible reason. “But in the midst of the pandemic, while these buildings and facilities were willing to serve, there was an important caveat in that if there was a COVID-19 outbreak that they would not be able to serve.”
Rather than take that risk, many local election officials decided not to use those locations.
Another reason: Because of a court fight over the state’s new legislative and congressional districts, the primary election was delayed.
“We had had our plans in place for our polling places, and then we effectively lost our lease,” said Alysoun McLaughlin, acting election director for Montgomery County, which cut 5% of its polling places. “At 240 polling places around the county, we had to scramble and find something new.”
In Montgomery County, as in other counties, officials managed to delay some school construction projects until after the original primary date, but when the primary moved to July, those projects could not be delayed further.
There have also been challenges with staffing for polling places.
Carroll County began to notice a decline in the number of people interested in working the polls before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the pandemic exacerbated the problem, said Katherine Berry, the county’s election director.
This year, some people did not want to work the polls because of COVID-related concerns, she said. Others had to quit when the primary date changed because they had already planned summer vacations.
The county is still recruiting election judges for the general election, which is now just over a month away. Officials reduced the number of polling places in Carroll County from 36 in 2018 to 24 this year, but they still don’t have enough poll workers.
“We are 128 judges short right now,” Berry said. “We can only have in-person voting if we have the election judges to support that, so we are working really hard to make sure that we have these 24 locations fully staffed.”
Cost was also a factor in that county. Berry gave lawmakers an analysis of the cost-per-voter at different polling places. One location cost more than $37,000 to run, but fewer than 370 people voted there in the primary. As a result, each voter at that location cost the county a little more than $100.
Whatever the reason, Atterbeary expressed concerns that fewer polling places makes it harder for Marylanders to vote or creates confusion for people who have been casting their ballots at the same place for years.
“The more access people have to vote, the better for our democracy,” she said.
