Mountains and Molehills
Some Maryland Republicans are talking up the primary election absentee ballot mistake. They'll probably use it to question the General Election later.
There has been a lot of ink spilled over the Maryland State Board of Elections’ error in sending the wrong ballot to voters in the upcoming June 23rd primary election.
And we all know why.
While the usual suspects in the Maryland Freedom Caucus are, as always, stirring up drama over the ballots. A new player has entered the chat.
Lifelong Democrat Ed Hale, running as a Republican for Governor due to his inability to win a Democratic gubernatorial primary, made comments yesterday demanding a third round of ballots be sent out to affected primary voters:
One Republican candidate for governor is calling on the Maryland State Board of elections to send out yet another round of mail-in ballots, saying the first attempt to fix more than 400,000 ballots just lead to more confusion.
Monday’s comments by Ed Hale are the latest fallout from the discovery by state elections officials last month that an undetermined number of voters, Democrats and Republicans, were accidentally sent a ballot for the opposite party’s primary.
Election officials, out of an abundance of caution, decided to send replacement ballots to 447,000 voters — an exact number could not be determined — and reached out with emails and letters alerting voters to discard the first ballot and vote the replacement.
Hale said the current fix is not working. A new round should be mailed using new colors that clearly identify the replacement ballot, he said.
“I would change the colors,” Hale told reporters. “You could probably go down to the Minute Mart, right down the street here in Rosedale, and get them printed up now, right now, and get them printed and send them out to people.”
Hale’s comment in the last paragraph of course, shows a complete lack of ignorance as to how ballots are produced. You can’t just “go down to the Minute Mart” and get a ballot printed on the official paper with the official security features that absentee ballots use.
What’s even more bizarre is the voter that Hale trotted out to try to prove his point:
As evidence of the confusion, Hale introduced Vincent Del Pizzo, who has worked for Hale as a contractor, who has received three ballots so far: One for the Democratic primary, one for the Republican primary and a replacement GOP primary ballot.
But Del Pizzo’s example of an election board snafu is not a perfect one.
Del Pizzo, 86, was a registered Democrat. In April, he changed his registration to Republican because he wanted to vote for Hale in the primary. He received a Democratic Primary ballot on May 1, he said, then he got a Republican ballot on May 27 in line with his new registration. Three days later, he received a second Republican primary ballot.
That’s great and all, but the voter, Del Pizzo, changed his registration late and received a Democratic ballot because he requested an absentee ballot as a Democratic voter in the Democratic primary.
On top of that, check out this gem that Bryan Sears included in the story.
Del Pizzo’s three ballots were on display Monday. One envelope, identified by Hale and Del Pizzo as the third received, is clearly marked “replacement ballot.”
When that was pointed out by Maryland Matters, Hale told reporters he had not looked at it that closely. He and his running mate, Tyrone Keys, pushed back when a reporter asked if it was possible that Del Pizzo got the initial Democratic ballot because his change in registration happened after the initial wave of ballots were processed.
“It’s possible,” said Hale. “And it’s possible if Vince had wheels he’d be a bike.”
I mean, this is absolute amateur hour from the Hale-Keys team. The kind of thing you expect when an egomaniac with no political experience and a propensity for bombast switches parties, runs for Governor, and expects a coronation.
Hale is doing this in an effort to curry favor with the wackadoo Republican base that has taken over a lot of Republican primaries thanks to years of Donald Trump’s lies about “stolen elections”. That wackadoo base that has migrated, inexplicably, from Dan Cox over to Ed Hale, and Hale needs to keep them in line for the next three weeks.
But at the end of the day, we know why Ed Hale is bringing this up. We know why the Maryland Freedom Caucus is bringing this up. We know why the Trump Justice Department is bringing all of this up. The entire discussion, the multiple news cycles, the press conferences, the social media posts, all of this is leading up to a forthcoming November effort to cast down on the election results, in Maryland and elsewhere. There is no better way to prepare the battlespace to cast doubt about November than trying to cast doubt on June, even if there is little to no evidence that the ballot error will have an impact on the Primary.
Becuase the modern GOP base has become the party of the insane, plenty of people, in positions of leadership, in party office, on the ballot, have suggested that the mistake by the Board of Elections and their contractor is an attempt to “steal” the primary election by some unknown actor. We’ve already seen plenty of people try to blame Wes Moore despite his lack of involvement in the process. And they all forget about Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
And of course, to put it another way:
Is there any doubt that the wrong ballots being sent to primary election voters is an embarrassing mistake for the Maryland Board of Elections? No. But there is no real reason or even remotely logical reason to believe that this is some grand conspiracy. Those who think, or at least pretend to think, that it is some sort of grand crisis are telling a lot about not only themselves, but also about their plans to contest elections in the future.