Early voters can start casting ballots Friday

Option to Sept. 14 offered

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010

The date of this year's primary election is Sept. 14, but because of a new state law people can start voting on Friday, Sept. 3, through Thursday, Sept. 9, except for Sunday.

St. Mary's County will have only one polling center open during these early voting days, at the Potomac Building at 23115 Leonard Hall Drive in Leonardtown. It will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. during those six days, including Labor Day.

The goal of early voting is to maximize voter turnout, said Wendy Adkins, director of the St. Mary's County Board of Elections. "It's for the convenience, the voters have six days if they can't make the Election Day," she said. Voters may still request absentee ballots if they want.

Fliers have been distributed and the word is out about early voting, but at the St. Mary's elections office "we haven't heard one thing" from the voters about it, Adkins said. "It's been eerily quiet."

The extra time and convenience for voters will come at a cost to taxpayers, though. This year's budget for the board of elections is $756,510, up 23 percent from the year before, which was $614,997. But costs are always higher in an election year, and it's unclear how much the early voting will add to the bill. "We're still spending," Adkins said, on supplies, election judges and staff overtime.

On each early voting day, there will be three staff members, 10 to 12 election judges and 10 touch-screen voting machines at the Potomac Building.

The votes on those machines will be locked and stored until 8 p.m. on primary election night, when the results will be tabulated with the rest of the votes, Adkins said.

Early voting will also be available before the Nov. 2 general election, from Oct. 22 to 28, except for the Sunday.

The state spent $80 million on the touch-screen voting machines, but because they don't produce a paper receipt the state plans to revert back to optical scan machines in the next election cycle. Budget problems prevented the state from going back to those machines this year.

Voter turnout is typically smaller in elections when there isn't a presidential race. In 2006, the primary election turnout in St. Mary's was only 26 percent. As of June, there were almost 58,000 voters registered in St. Mary's County, with 24,519 Democrats and 22,589 Republicans. The 9,540 unaffiliated voters and other-party voters cannot participate in the primary election.

Counties with less than 150,000 registered voters have one early voting center. Anne Arundel County, Baltimore city, Baltimore County, Montgomery County and Prince George's County have five early voting centers apiece because of their large populations.

Sen. Roy Dyson (D-St. Mary's, Calvert, Charles) was one of the many sponsors of the bill introduced in 2007 to send the early voting question to referendum. On the 2008 ballot, 1,755,844 chose early voting, while 670,759 voted against it.

jbabcock@somdnews.com