It was first noted on the State Board of Elections website at 2:36 a.m. ( as noted on the timestamp of the sites last update), that something was wrong. Then, it happened. Inexplicably, ballot return numbers for Baltimore Citywide races all went to zero. But why?
Around 10:45 a.m., the board posted an announcement on its Facebook page with an attached press release explaining the circumstances of the problem:
" During the ballot printing process, the State Board of Elections discovered a small proofing error in the ballot title for the Democratic contest for Council District 1 (Ballot Styles 1 and 19). The Board requested that the error be corrected with their printing vendor, SeaChange. While the error was corrected in the official voting database, the error was not corrected on a portion of the ballots that were mailed to voters in District 1.
Due to this inconsistency, vote by mail ballot styles for District 1 could not be counted properly. The State Board of Elections is working to assess if vote by mail ballots outside of District 1 were impacted, but is not aware of any other inconsistencies at this time. It appears that the impacted contests are Council District 1 and judge of the Circuit Court.
The Board is committed to an accurate count of every eligible ballot in Baltimore City, including those impacted by the failure to print and mail the corrected ballot. The Board will work with the Baltimore City Board of Elections to duplicate affected vote by mail ballots onto correct ballots for scanning. The post-election ballot tabulation audit conducted after every election will be carefully reviewed to confirm the accuracy of the election results."
---Maryland State Board of Elections
This story will be updated