As of Thursday morning, the Montgomery County Board of Elections has received 33,650 mail in ballots, according to its spokesperson Dr. Gilberto Zelaya.
That is out of a total request for 115,751 ballots. That means more than 82,000 residents who requested ballots did not vote in the June 19 primary election.
Of the 33,650 that were returned either by mail or into an election drop box, 29,159 were from registered Democrats and 3,436 were from registered Republicans.
“The vast majority” of the ballots that were returned through the election drop boxes came in on election day, Zelaya said.
Election workers will check each ballot to ensure that it is signed. If it is not, they will contact the voter either by phone or email, and ask them to come to Montgomery College in Germantown, where ballot counting is taking place, and sign their ballot.
The Board of Elections is about to start counting mail-in ballots. So exciting!!! #NataliforCouncil pic.twitter.com/YRFpUSXHxP
— Natali Fani-González (@NataliFGonzalez) July 21, 2022
Once these are counted, election workers then will count the provisional ballots.
Zelaya wouldn’t say when he expected the final results to be completed, but did say, “Our goal is to keep counting until we are done counting.”
With all precincts counted from early voting and election day voting, the county executive race remains extremely close. Businessman David Blair leads incumbent Marc Elrich by 1,191 votes. Four years ago, Elrich defeated Blair by just 77 votes.
According to unofficial results by the Maryland Board of Elections, Blair has 28,961 votes, Elrich received 27,770. Hans Riemer, who conceded, is in third place with 14,911. The day after the primary, Riemer tweeted, “Earlier today I conceded I did so full of gratitude and optimism. Gratitude to our incredible supporters Optimism because of what we accomplished together — Ushering in a new era of progressivism in our County. Our work continues — to say YES to progress!”
