Montgomery County election workers on Thursday continued their count of hundreds of thousands of ballots from Tuesday’s primary.
An update was supposed to be posted online on Thursday after workers stopped for the day, but there was not one. Results were still not updated as of 11:30 a.m. Friday.
Gilberto Zelaya, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Board of Elections, said the county sent its latest results in to the state. However, a state official said late Thursday night that it did not get results from the county. The state was planning to try to figure out on Friday morning what the problem was.
New results cannot be released until they are verified by the state, according to Zelaya.
The state Board of Elections website listed 11 Maryland jurisdictions that had updated results Thursday night.
Board of Elections staff members on Thursday afternoon said 671,328 ballots were sent to registered Montgomery County voters and 265,117 had been returned.
As of 2 p.m. Thursday, 77,494 ballots had been counted, staff members said.
Because of the large volume of ballots returned, final election results are expected to be delayed, Zelaya said. The state’s election calendar initially called for final results to certified by June 12, which is the same timetable used for each election.
As of early Wednesday morning, when the last new results were posted, 58,580 ballots had been counted in the at-large Board of Education race. Lynne Harris and Sunil Dasgupta were at the front of a field of 13 hopefuls.
Harris had 16,460 votes and Dasgupta had 10,594 votes.
Stephen Austin was in third place with 9,254 votes.
The top two vote-getters will advance to the Nov. 3 general election.
In the District 4 race, incumbent Shebra Evans led with 31,347 votes. Steve Solomon was next with 20,738 votes. Ehren Park Reynolds is also on the ballot — and has received 4,705 votes — but has withdrawn from the race, and Evans and Solomon are expected to advance to the general election.
There is no primary election for the District 2 race because there are only two candidates: incumbent Rebecca Smondrowski and challenger Michael Fryar.
Three members of Congress representing Montgomery County — all Democrats — were on their way to getting their party’s nomination for the general election. The Republican side also had clear leaders for their nominations in those three districts — 3, 6 and 8.
Four sitting circuit judges were in the lead over two challengers on both the Republican and Democratic tickets.
According to the Montgomery County Board of Elections, for the primary, there were:
• 4,584 regular ballots cast at voting centers
• 608 provisional ballots
• 32,747 ballots turned in at seven drop boxes
• 232,370 ballots that came in by U.S. mail
So far, 114,113 ballots have been reviewed, sorted, matched and accepted for a canvass, according to the county Board of Elections, and 68,200 have been canvassed, scanned and included in election results provided to the state.
Zelaya said residents can check on the status of their ballot by sending “CHECK” as a text message to 77788.
They will get a link asking for their name, date of birth and ZIP code. When they provide that, they will learn if their ballot is considered “Sent” (mailed by the post office, but not returned) or “Received” (the Board of Elections has it).