U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon notified the State of Maryland that she has triggered a civil rights investigation regarding the state’s distribution of faulty ballots for the primary election in June.
The state announced that 500,000 primary ballots were erroneously printed and sent out to voters earlier this month. The error caused voters to get ballots for the wrong political party. Maryland State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis said that all voters will get replacement ballots, even if their original ballot was correct. They will be told to destroy the original ballot and use the replacement. The mistake affected voters who received mail in ballots before May 14.
The Maryland Freedom Caucus pointed out that the mistake could trigger many issues including voters returning two ballots, ballots being mistakenly discarded and not counted, and voter suppression due to confusion about the ballots. Freedom Caucus member Delegate Kathy Szeliga stated, “This has the potential to really be a disaster. We need to know how the Board of Elections will know if people return two ballots by accident.”
The state has claimed the problem was with their vender and was not the fault of the Board of Elections.
Dhillon has demanded that Maryland State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis preserve “true and correct copies” of all ballots, mailing records and other corrective actions the state has taken for the June 3 gubernatorial election.
Many in Maryland are calling for DeMarinis to be fired.
“It’s the wrong time to send voters the wrong ballots,” Dhillon warned in a post on X. “This Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights will not let Maryland’s mail-in ballot mistakes go unnoticed!”
President Trump commented on the problem:
“This was done by the Corrupt Governor of the State, Wes Moore.”
“He allowed this to happen in order to make sure the Democrats win. It never made sense to me that Maryland was considered an automatic Democrat State, but now I see why.”
Maryland Governor Moore reacted to Trump’s statements by saying that the President’s claims were “false and irresponsible.”
“The State Board of Elections identified a vendor error, disclosed it publicly, and is fixing it to ensure every eligible voter receives a valid ballot and every valid vote is counted,” his office stated.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit accusing Maryland’s top election officials of refusing to hand over the state’s complete voter registration list, saying the move violates federal civil rights and election laws designed to ensure accurate voter rolls.
Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington were the six states sued by the federal government. The investigation has been ongoing and Maryland officials have not responded.
Federal officials say the state has no legal basis to withhold the information.
We reported on this situation earlier this month:
-Jan Greenhawk, Author
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