Your vote counts, but you only get just one.
So a Maryland voter who got two mail-in ballots for the same person contacted WTOP and wanted to know: What should they do?
Gilberto Zelaya, the community engagement public relations officer for the Montgomery County Board of Elections, said in a case like that, the answer is simple: “Vote one, return the voted one and discard or destroy the other.”
Zelaya said it’s not a common occurrence that a single voter ends up with two mail-in ballots, but there are “checks and balances” to ensure that the completed mail-in ballot will be counted when returned, and that a single voter doesn’t cast more than one ballot.
Zelaya said it’s very important that every voter using the mail-in ballot checks to make sure they sign the voter oath on the return envelope.
Once the completed ballot comes back to the local board of elections, Zelaya said, “They will remove the privacy flap to make ensure there’s a voter signature.”
If not, Zelaya said, “We will initiate the process to ‘cure’ or to contact the voter to make the arrangements to sign that voter oath” so that the ballot can be scanned in as received.
Montgomery County has recently been plagued by other elections-related errors. Last month, the county mailed incorrect details about the upcoming presidential election to tens of thousands of people. One included a packet of information with a Spanish section that said the early voting period begins on Nov. 24 — after Election Day — when it actually begins on Oct. 24.
The county also sent some voters sample ballots with other people’s names on them. Liz Allen, of Bethesda, was among the voters who received an incorrectly labeled ballot. She said it was alarming at first, but was told by the county BOE that she wasn’t the only person notifying them of errors with their sample ballot.
“Let’s say hypothetically a second ballot comes in, once it goes through the process, and they scan that second ballot, that record for that voter will say that a ballot has already been submitted,” he added.
Zelaya said any time a voter has any questions about the voting or ballot process, they should contact their local board of elections: “Always reach out to your local board of elections. There’s checks and balances and safeguards set in action to prevent an individual from returning two ballots.”
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