Baltimore Mails Out Sample Ballots With Wrong Date

BALTIMORE (WJZ)-- The Board of Elections gets it wrong. Less than a month until the Baltimore City primary, a sample ballot mailed to registered voters has the wrong date.

Political Reporter Pat Warren reports on the fallout.

The Baltimore City Board of Elections declares, " A prepared voter is a good voter." But its sample ballot prepares voters to fail, if they believe what it says about Election Day.

"It's printed up here, as you can see, Election Day is Sept. 3," said Sen. Catherine Pugh. "A Saturday voting day is not a bad idea, but the fact of the matter is that it's Tuesday, Sept. 13. And so we need the city to take corrective action."

State Senator Catherine Pugh, a candidate for mayor, is taking incumbent Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to task.

"Now there's all kind of blame that should go around, but I can't imagine being the mayor with this kind of important document that has to be sent to all the voters, that you would not have read this and made sure that it is correct," Pugh said.

But, like she said, there's all kinds of blame.

"It's clearly a stretch and I don't know who's saying it, but hopefully it's not the senator who knows that the make-up and hiring of the board is done by the state," Rawlings-Blake said. "So, actually it is the senator. So maybe I should be looking at her," Rawlings-Blake said.

The Baltimore City Board of Elections issued a correction on its website and in news releases Thursday.

"We have this one day, Election Day, and it's important that we get it right, and I made sure there are things in place to make sure that type of thing doesn't happen again," Rawlings-Blake said.

But that's not enough to dispel candidates' concerns.

"Sometimes, what seems like just an accident when there are a series of events, begins to seem like a pattern, a pattern to try to confuse voters," Mayoral Candidate Otis Rolley said.

"People become very disenchanted with the voting process in the first place," Pugh said. "Some people may think there's an effort here to suppress voters, and it's also very, very confusing."

Like politics.

"Believe you me, if it rains too hard, my opponents will say it's my fault," Rawlings-Blake said.

Every registered voter who got a sample ballot will also get a card in the mail correcting the error. Of course, none of this will mean anything if you're not registered to vote, and the deadline for that is Tuesday, Aug. 23.

Sept. 3 is one of six early voting days, but again, the primary is Sept. 13.