Maryland residents will head to the polls on Nov. 8 to vote in the general election, but that’s not the only way to exercise your constitutional right.
Starting Oct. 27 until Nov. 3, Marylanders can vote early. There will be 96 early voting stations set up all throughout the state. Residents need to make sure they are voting a station in the county they live in or inside Baltimore city limits if that’s where they reside.
That’s different from election day, where voters will need to go to their neighborhood polling station to cast their ballots.
“You can't just go to any polling location in in the state because they won't have the ballot for you,” said Nikki Charlson, deputy administrator at the Maryland State Board of Elections. “We encourage voters, if they're not sure where their neighborhood polling places are, to look at their voter registration card, look at the sample ballot that's going to come in the mail or go to ourwebsite, type in the address where you live.”
Marylanders also have the option of mail-in voting.
Residents just need to request a ballot from the Maryland State Board of Electionswebsite or go to theirlocal board of elections. Voters can request a physical or downloadable ballot. Voters can request ballots until Nov. 4.
Those ballots can be mailed in or dropped at designated ballot boxes. Ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 8.
If you aren’t registered yet, you won’t be able to register online. That deadline passed on Oct. 18. However, you can go to a polling station and register to vote up until election day.
Charlson said the State Board of Elections has a rigorous process to ensure the fidelity of the voting process.
“Election officials in Maryland do many audits and duplicate and triplicate checks of the process from the voter registration process all the way through the vote counting and results process,” she said. “After this election, they'll also be a manual audit, where a local election officials are going to randomly select precincts and they're going to pull the ballots from those precincts and hand count them and compare those results against the voting system results.”