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Photo by Graham Cullen
Election workers Marcie Grace and George Laugelli review absentee ballots Thursday morning at Winchester Hall. |
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The addition of 276 absentee ballots did little to change the final results in the City of Frederick 's primary election.Elections officials on Thursday certified results of this week's returns. The absentee ballots changed the positions of two Democratic aldermanic candidates, pushing Michael O'Connor above Carol Krimm. The two had been tied Tuesday night. Both remain in the top five for their party and will move on to the general election. All other candidate positions remained the same. Frederick County Elections Director Stuart Harvey said the absentee ballots had no chance to unseat any of Tuesday's winners. "They couldn't simply because the numbers were so large, the margins were so large," he said. Harvey said the number of absentee ballots was equivalent to what was received in the 2005 primary election. The absentee votes did add a little more than 1 percent to voter turnout, bringing the number to just under 18 percent of the city's 24,943 registered Democrats and Republicans. People who were not registered to vote in the primary will still have a chance to register before the general election, Harvey said. The registration period runs from Sept. 25 to Oct. 5. The ballot process went smoothly with no major glitches at the polls, Harvey said. "It was a low-turnout election, but we had experienced judges working at the polling places," he said. Frederick 's voter turnout trailed that of Annapolis, which also held a municipal primary election this week. About 23.5 percent of the 18,396 registered Republicans and Democrats in that city turned out to vote.
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