After Montgomery County’s Board of Elections certified results of the July 19 primary election, a close count between incumbent Democratic County Executive Marc Elrich and his challenger David Blair leaves open the possibility of a recount.
With all 258 precincts reporting, the county election board certified their final count where Elrich received 55,497 votes, while Blair trailed by only 35 ballots with 55,462.
- See the full results from Montgomery County’s July 19 Primary Election
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Blair, who lost to Elrich for the same office in 2018 by 77 votes, has said he intends to request a recount. His campaign has 72 hours from the time of certification to do so.
The AP has declared our race too close to call. We’ll be requesting a recount. More: pic.twitter.com/BlB2s4h6O2
— David Blair (@DavidTBlair) August 7, 2022
The certification vote, which was held virtually, was unanimous and took about three minutes.
The board had originally planned on certifying the results Friday afternoon, but that changed when Board of Elections Acting Administrator Alysoun McLaughlin announced Thursday that 102 provisional ballots had been discovered during the routine audit before certification.
Before Saturday afternoon’s certification, those 102 ballots were counted and included into the final tally. You can see the certified primary results for all the races here.
It was with the inclusion of those 102 ballots that Elrich’s lead over Blair shrank from 42 to 35. There were 141,581 votes cast for all four democratic executive candidates on July 19.
After the vote, board president Nahid Khozeimeh thanked staff who helped verify the last-minute ballots.
“I would like to thank the staff for all their dedication, hard work and long hours,” she said. “I know that some of them worked until two o’clock and then came back at seven o’clock in the morning. We thank you so very much.”
