Voters cast their ballots and get checked in to vote at the Meadowbrook Athletic Complex in Ellicott City on Thursday, the first day of early voting in Maryland. Photo by William J. Ford.
Maryland voters headed to the polls Thursday for the first day of early voting in numbers that the state’s top election official says are exciting.
Statewide, more than 150,000 people — 3.58% of the more than 4.2 million registered voters — cast a ballot in person on the first of eight days of early voting.
“Day one had a high level of enthusiasm and participation,” said state Election Administrator Jared DeMarinis.
That official number of votes cast Thursday posted on the state board’s website does not include another 4,000 provisional ballots, according to DeMarinis.
Maryland’s most populous counties – Montgomery, Prince George’s, Baltimore, and Anne Arundel Counties — saw the biggest turnout in terms of raw numbers.
But smaller, more rural counties such as Talbot, Queen Anne’s and Calvert Counties all reported voter turnout above 6.3% for the first day.
Statewide, the numbers were down slightly on Friday, but still strong. Another 135,905 voters cast ballots, representing another 3.23% of the total of registered voters in the state, according to State Board of Elections data.
DeMarinis said problems at early voting centers around the state were minimal.
“There was a line here, a line there. That’s just because of the level, right?” said DeMarinis. “It’s just showing that there’s a lot of participation. A lot of people want to come out, and they’re kind of hitting, jamming the system, at one time. But no one was really complaining about staying or the length of any lines. The judges moved them very quickly.”
Statewide turnout on day one of the 2024 election is roughly on par with the first day of voting in the 2020 presidential election.
“Overall, I’m very excited,” said DeMarinis.
“If you only want to go with 150,000 votes cast yesterday [Thursday], the number was less that we had in 2020, but also the number of people voting by mail was way less,” he said. “We have over 820,000 requests for … mail-in ballots. We have received back over 416,000 ballots. We have over half-a-million ballots in the bank.”
In 2020, more than 152,000 people voted on day one of early voting. The turnout was equal to 3.7% of the 4.1 million registered Maryland voters at the time.
In 2016, nearly 124,000 of the 3.9 million voters statewide voted on day one. The turnout was equal to 3.17%.
Early voting numbers released so far do not include the more the 800,000 mail-in ballot requests received by election officials. The number of requests is nearly 20% of all registered voters in the state. Excluding the 2020 primary election when mail-in ballots were sent to all state voters because of the pandemic, the number of requests this year is the most for the state.
Voting in person remains the most popular option for Maryland residents, according to a poll released earlier this month by the Institute of Politics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
According to that survey, 435 of voters said they would cast their ballot on Election Day, Nov. 5. Another 28% said they would vote in person during the eight-day early voting period. Twenty-seven percent of those polled said they would vote by mail or use a drop box.
DeMarinis said it is too soon to know if mail-in voting will increase participation or simply change voting habits.
“I think that this is one of these elections that we’re going to really see afterwards where Marylanders are,” he said. “I think the one truism right now is that mail-in voting is here to stay, and mail-in voting is going to be a significant portion of how Marylanders vote. It’s not going to go back to that 5 – 6% range anymore.
“Where it falls on the spectrum — a third, or whether it’s 40% — that part is to be determined,” DeMarinis said. “The other part would be how it affects the in-person portion of it and is it going to be on Election Day or spaced out throughout the [early voting] eight days plus Election Day.”