Elections administrator to lawmakers: Don’t mess with election

Friday, Oct. 12, 2007

‘‘We have got everything locked down and ready to go for that election,” she told Sen. Roy P. Dyson, who chairs the Senate Ethics and Election Law Subcommittee, at a briefing Wednesday. ‘‘It’s very confusing for poll workers to have different procedures in the same election.”

Voter turnout is historically the greatest in a presidential general election, and Lamone said state and local boards try to minimize any late modifications that could cause confusion on Election Day.

Additionally, one-third of Maryland’s 24 local election directors are relatively new to their jobs and half of them will be administering their first presidential election next year, Lamone said.

Gov. Martin O’Malley’s election last year means there are a lot of local election board members who have no Election Day experience, Lamone said. The ruling party in Annapolis gets a majority of the five seats on all 24 local boards.

‘‘They’re going to get a good practice run in the primary,” said Dyson (D-Calvert, St. Mary’s, Charles) of Great Mills.

Last month’s Baltimore mayoral primary offered some good news for an electoral system that was plagued by problems last year.

Only 13 of the city’s 290 polling places failed to open on time and all of them were operating by 8 a.m., Lamone reported. Only seven of the 1,804 touch-screen voting machines malfunctioned and had to be taken out of service, she said, and the electronic poll books used to record voter participation operated smoothly.

The state board is also working to fine-tune other elements of the process. It has contracted with a local printer to supply enough absentee ballots after high demand last year caused a shortage of the cards. And the state board is helping local boards recruit more election judges to staff the polls, including using popular Web sites such as MySpace.com and Craig’s List to enlist younger poll workers.

Lamone acknowledged that the biggest recruiting challenge for the Feb. 12 primary isn’t finding people who understand the high-tech system, but the date. The early primary will cause some judges who regularly work the election to miss it this year because they may head for warmer climates for the winter.

‘‘This year, the bigger problem is time of year, not technological complications,” she said.

But Dyson said he has heard from longtime election judges that the new technology is ‘‘a little intimidating.”

Lamone pledged that the state board will continue efforts to increase the pool of poll workers.

‘‘I see us coming up to a real problem,” Dyson warned.