Before Election Day even began Tuesday in Rockville, some registered voters experienced technical problems with the online tracking of their ballots or received their ballots late in the mail—some not at all.
Brandon Hallmark, a Rockville resident who lives at the Bainbridge Shady Grove apartment complex, came to Rockville City Hall on Election Day to cast his vote in-person after he never received a ballot in the mail. He said elections workers at voter check-in told him the Bainbridge apartments were not within city limits.
When Hallmark heard that, he thought it was strange, as he had lived in Rockville for more than five years and voted in the past two city elections.
“I use Rockville amenities all the time, I go to King Farm and utilize the Mattie J. Stepanek Park and go to the dog park and whatnot. So, it makes sense that we’re Rockvillians. And I pay Rockville taxes,” he said.
According to the City of Rockville’s address and residency database, the Bainbridge apartment community (15955 Frederick Road) is within city limits.
Hallmark said being turned away at the polls was a “bizarre experience” and he was ultimately able to cast a provisional ballot, but was concerned that his neighbors had been disenfranchised. There are approximately 412 units at the Bainbridge apartment complex, Hallmark said.
Sara Taylor-Ferrell, the Rockville city clerk and director of council operations, said the issue at Bainbridge was completely out of the city’s control and can be attributed to the state’s recent redistricting efforts.
While in the process of redistricting it appears the Bainbridge apartments were omitted from the city limits of Rockville, she said. When the State Board of Elections pulled the addresses of registered voters in Rockville to their vendor that mails the ballots, those in the Bainbridge apartments were not included, Taylor-Ferrell said.
“Provisional ballots exist for this reason,” said Boris Brajkovic, the election director at the Montgomery County Board of Elections. He told MoCo360 that the board is working to resolve the issue and make sure that the county and state are properly recording the lines of Rockville’s city limits, so this issue does not happen again.
Jared DeMarinis, the state administrator of elections at the Maryland State Board of Elections, did not immediately respond to MoCo360’s request for comment and more information about redistricting due to the Veteran’s Day holiday.
Some of Rockville’s newly elected council members have called for reform of the city’s election process including the expansion of the Board of Supervisors of Elections and training for its members, who are volunteers.
Montgomery Community Media reported a similar incident with a Bainbridge resident who came in to vote Tuesday and was told by election officials that her community was not in the City of Rockville, according to Maryland State Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Dist. 17).
Kagan said that she would prefer the county run the elections in Rockville rather than the city, MCM reported.
Kagan did not immediately respond to MoCo360’s email and calls requesting comment.
Hallmark recalled that when he went to vote on Tuesday, he initially believed that his ballot simply had been lost in the mail.
But after working with election officials at City Hall to get his vote cast, he realized that because their system did not recognize the Bainbridge apartments were within Rockville city limits, others in his building may have also not received their ballot.
After casting his provisional ballot, Hallmark said he informed mayoral candidates/councilmembers Monique Ashton and Mark Pierzchala and Mayor Bridget Donnell-Newton about the issue outside of City Hall. Hallmark said he also returned to his apartment building and notified the building management about the issue.
At 12:52 p.m. Tuesday, Bainbridge management sent an email to all residents with a note from Taylor-Ferrell that told them they were eligible to vote in the city elections.
“If you wish to vote and you are unable to come in-person and cast your ballot at one of the locations above, please contact the City Clerk’s Office at 240-314-8280 and someone will assist you. Ballots must be received by 8 p.m. today,” the message stated.
Marissa Valeri, a newly elected city councilmember, said she was at City Hall when Hallmark arrived to vote and later approached candidates about the issue.
“It’s completely unacceptable that an entire community would have been expected to vote provisional. That’s just ridiculous,” she said.
“It still makes me sick to my stomach because this gentleman really wanted to vote, and he followed the directions. … I felt bad for him and when he realized, Oh my god it might be my entire community around me, his eyes got so wide,” she said.
Late ballots
The city also dealt with problems of residents receiving their mail-in ballots late and technical issues with the online ballot tracking tool.
According to the city website, ballots were set to be mailed to registered voters on or before Oct. 13. But it is estimated that nearly 1,000 voters may not have received their ballots on time, according to City Councilmember-Elect Adam Van Grack.
On Oct. 26, the Rockville Board of Supervisors of Elections notified the mayor, council and candidates about an issue with the distribution of ballots in a letter, Van Grack said.
In the letter – which was viewed by MoCo360 – Robert D. Kurnick, the chair of the elections board, wrote, “We learned this week that several registered voters have not received their ballots. The City Clerk’s office and Board of Supervisors of Elections are correcting that problem.”
The letter explained: “The City of Rockville relies on the vendor, the Taylor Corporation [a Minnesota-based printing company], used by the State of Maryland to mail ballots to voters and relies on the Maryland Board of Elections (BOE) to provide Taylor with the addresses of all registered Rockville voters. Rockville has no choice in this matter because it does not have its own voter database and using a different vendor would preclude Rockville from using the state’s voting equipment and high-speed scanners to tabulate ballots.”
The Taylor Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We have now discovered that the Maryland BOE did not provide Taylor with the addresses of those Rockville votes who had signed up to receive their ballots online in the 2022 general election,” Kurnick wrote. “As a result, many voters did not receive their ballots when they should have.”
“I apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused. Please know that we are fixing this problem. All voters should receive their ballots and be able to cast them in a timely manner,” Kurnick wrote.
Kurnick told MoCo360 that neither the state nor Taylor Corp. advised the city of the error in which a portion of voters on the list to receive mail-in ballots had “web delivery” listed instead of their address.
“We did, I think, everything we could to correct these issues. But I think what folks need to understand is the these issues didn’t arise because of mistakes made by the city of Rockville, they’re mistakes made by the state of Maryland and the vendor that we were obligated to use,” he said.
To amend the issue, Taylor-Ferrell said that the city clerk’s office collected the addresses of the 964 registered voters who signed up to receive their ballots through “web delivery” in the 2022 general election. Then the office mailed out ballots for those voters on Oct. 27.
Taylor-Ferrell said that to her knowledge all the ballots that were sent late had been received by Oct. 31.
In the future, Kurnick said that he would suggest the Rockville Board of Supervisors of Elections to inspect the voter data that gets transmitted by the state to the vendor, to look for anomalies and problems.
“If we had looked at that spreadsheet earlier, we would have seen that a number of individuals who have had an address that said [web delivery] and we could have caught that problem earlier,” Kurnick said.
He added that even if they had inspected the voter data, he was not sure if the board would have recognized the issue of Bainbridge residents being excluded from the list.
A botched ballot tracker
In the case of issues with Taylor Corp.’s online ballot tracker, the elections board notified the public about the problem in an Oct. 27 message posted to the “Voting & Elections” page of the Rockville website.
The message explained that a week prior, a “technical issue” with the online tool to track the delivery of ballots to a voter’s home had occurred but had no effect on the delivery of ballots. The board did not provide details on the name of the vendor and subsequently removed the tool from its website, leaving voters without a way of knowing when their ballot would arrive at their doorstep.
“Voters who used that tool to track their ballots received emails with inaccurate information generated, not by the city, but by the vendor,” the message stated.
Van Grack recalled that he had used the online tracker tool to help his mother track her ballot and ran into an issue too. He said that when they checked the site, the tracker showed that her ballot had been shown as received and counted by the city before she had even received it.
According to Taylor-Ferrell, the tracker was intended to only help voters track the delivery of their ballot to their home. After the completed ballot is mailed or placed in a drop box, the City of Rockville took the responsibility to keep track of all ballots received — but not tabulated — in an excel sheet on the city’s website, Taylor-Ferrell said.
The excel sheet contains the names, voter ID and date of when a voter’s ballot was received, and was last updated Nov. 6.
Election reform
Valeri and Van Grack said that there needs to be reform in Rockville’s election processes. Newly elected councilmember Barry Jackson echoed that sentiment and suggested that the city implement a training program for the city government’s board and commissions.
Jackson said that he was “troubled” by the informal meetings by the elections board and found watching the meetings confusing. He said the commission should operate like the City Council so it is more clear who is talking, who is making a motion and whether people are joining the meeting remotely or in-person.
Valeri, who served on the Rockville Charter Review Commission, said in the past the commission recommended the Board of Supervisors of Elections expand and have more members. Currently there are five members on the board.
“It’s just simply a matter that Rockville and the Board of Supervisors of Elections needs to do better,” Van Grack said. “I mean, I understand, Sen. Kagan putting a specific proposal and perhaps that would be the right solution. But I know that in the past, Rockville has done an excellent job. And it would be nice if Rockville could continue being able to supervise their own elections.”
“However, we can’t have an election that has problems the way this election did. And so, we need to do better and whatever solutions are the best way to get us to that goal, we need to move forward in that direction,” he said.
Despite the issues the city ran into, Taylor-Ferrell said the mail-in election was a success especially due to the increase in voter turnout. According to the unofficial results, the number of ballots cast increased by 3.47% between the 2019 and 2023 elections.
“We still received more ballots in 2023 than in 2019. So overall, the process and the election all went well. That, and the board did a very good job on the integrity and the confidence and security of this election process. And overall, I think it was a successful election,” she said. “And the [official] results will be certified on Tuesday, Nov. 14, and those numbers will show that we did increase the voter turnout again.”
This story will be updated when more information becomes available.
