Voters cast their ballots on the last day of early voting in Maryland on Oct. 31. These voters are at Wayne K. Curry Sports and Learning Complex in Prince George’s County. Photo by William J. Ford.
Josette Wheatley considered herself an “old school” voter, regularly traveling to her polling place and casting her ballot on Election Day. But she changed directions this year and voted early for a good reason.
“It’s like God is calling me. If we don’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder, we’re going to lose our country,”said the 59-year-old small business owner from Worcester County, who was motivated to come out on the first day of early voting on Oct. 24 to vote for Republicans Donald Trump for president and Larry Hogan for U.S. Senate.
In Prince George’s County, Democrat Daisey Maggett also acknowledged a higher power was behind her decision to turn up on the first day of early voting.
“I need to go in person and see my vote go through the machine,” said Maggett, 82, a retired African-American federal employee, who was voting for Vice President Kamala Harris (D) for president and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) for the Senate seat to replace fellow Democrat and longtime Sen. Ben Cardin, who announced last year he wouldn’t seek reelection.
While not everybody cited divine intervention, Wheatley and Maggett are part of a slowly growing trend in Maryland toward voting before Election Day, either by voting in person at one of the 97 voting centers around the state that were open for eight days in last month, or by requesting and returning a mail-in ballot.
The two women were among the 150,315 Marylander voters who cast a ballot on the first day of early voting. By Oct. 31, the end of the early voting period, a total of 994,663 ballots had been cast at the early voting centers.
Another 869,332 voters requested mail-in ballots this year, and just under 600,000 of those had been returned by Saturday night. Together, mail-in requests and early voting ballots this year account for more than 44% of the state’s 4.2 million registered voters.
Jared DeMarinis, state elections administrator, said the early voting numbers have been among the highest in the state’s history.
“I’m excited by the level of participation and enthusiasm that I see among Marylanders regarding voting [in] this election,” said DeMarinis, during early voting. “That excitement and enthusiasm will continue hopefully throughout the early voting period and on Election Day.”
DeMarinis said it is hard to compare data because Maryland has a relatively short history with early voting, which began in the state in 2010 and has only been conducted through only three previous presidential election cycles. This is the fourth.
There are other complications. The first presidential general election with early voting took place in 2012 only included five days of early voting which was postponed on Oct. 29 and 30 and extended to Nov. 2, after former Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) issued an executive order because of Hurricane Sandy.
The highest one-day turnout that year was 107,385 voters.
In 2016, early voting extended to the current eight days with the highest one-day voter turnout of almost 143,500.
Four years later, the COVID-19 pandemic led to more than 1.6 million mail-in ballots being sent to voters, about 1.5 million were received. Out of the state’s 4.1 million that year, about 58% voted by mail-in ballot. But even during a pandemic, the state broke a record with more than 161,000 people for single-day early voting turnout, according to the board of elections.
Today, the state has about 4.2 million voters. Early voting this year peaked at 159,160 on Oct. 31.
‘Love it’
In Prince George’s County, an unofficial tally shows 150,215 people cast ballots at early voting centers last month and another 114,000 requested mail-in ballots. The turnout was good news to Wendy Honesty-Bey, the county’s election administrator.
“This is going to be a historical event,” Honesty-Bey said during early voting. “People are coming out to vote. Love it.”
Joe Bennett was one of those voters. He came out on the first day of early voting at the College Park Community Center to make sure he could cast votes for Trump and Hogan — for reasons of policy but, in Hogan’s case, for personal reasons.
Bennett’s nephew, Jimmy Myrick Jr., received the Governor’s Special Olympics Maryland Medal of Courage Award from Hogan in February 2016. The two met when Hogan was hospitalized while battling cancer, and Myrick was in the same hospital and on the same floor. Myrick died the month he received the medal at age 33 after a four-year battle with leukemia.
“He did a good job as governor,” Bennett said. “But I will always remember that interaction he had with little Jimmy. That stuff kind of sways you.”
Edwina Hall, a military veteran and registered Democrat from Prince George’s County who turned 61 on Saturday, voted Oct. 31, the last day of early voting. Although Hall has voted both on Election Day and during early voting, the retired information technology worker said she always cast her ballot in person.
“You look back at history. All the things that our people had been through. They paved the way for us to come out here and vote. The struggles they went through, the killings,” said Hall, an African-American voter who cast her ballot for Harris and Alsobrooks.
“I figured this is in honor of them. I need to be out here voting,” she said.
For Carole Fisher, 89, early voting is not novel: She said she has requested a mail-in ballot in the last few elections. A member of the Howard County Democratic Central Committee, she was holding an Alsobrooks poster as she dropped her ballot in a drop box outside the Meadowbrook Athletic Complex in Howard County on Oct. 24.
“I encourage everybody else just to do something. Go vote,” said Fisher, who said her first vote was at age 21 for then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Douglas Edwards of Prince George’s County has voted since he was 18 and said he always voted in person, either on Election Day or during early voting. But this year, the retired federal worker and community activist decided to request a mail-in ballot to vote for Harris and Alsobrooks.
“There is no way we are going to stand in line at our age. I’m 87 and my wife is 82,” said Edwards, a registered Democrat since 1950. “No matter how I voted, I still voted.”