WASHINGTON — Montgomery County’s Board of Elections has been told to try again to come up with nine early voting sites it can agree on.
After hearing hours of testimony in Annapolis, the five-member Maryland State Board of Elections instructed the Montgomery County board to return with a plan by next Friday. Under Maryland law, early voting sites have to be selected by Oct. 28.
The Republican-led Montgomery County elections board came under fire from Democrats and community groups for shifting two early voting sites from Burtonsville and Chevy Chase to Brookeville and Potomac. After heavy lobbying, the local board came up with what board president James Shalleck called a compromise: a plan to restore the Burtonsville site, but keep the Potomac site. That meant the early voting facility in Chevy Chase would no longer be used. Opponents cried foul, and the state board weighed in.
Initially, the state board was also deadlocked along party lines, with a 3-2 vote to defer to the Montgomery County board’s plan. But the vote required a supermajority, so that was recorded as a deadlock.
That led to a closed session, and the ultimate decision to instruct the Montgomery County elections board to come up with a list of nine voting sites that its members could agree on.
After the hearing, Shalleck, who is a Republican, and board member Mary Ann Keeffe, a Democrat, told reporters they would not have any difficulty getting back to work on a plan for the early voting sites — that, despite descriptions from board members that the recent fight had been “acrimonious.”
Shalleck told reporters, “Underneath all the dispute is true friendship. We gotta put the acrimony aside and work together as a team.”
Keeffe agreed, saying, “We’ve formed very good friendships … there’s no problem in working together.”
WTOP’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report.
