Views on Maryland’s mail ballot error are as partisan as elections themselves

When Ron Hill of Frederick received his ballot by mail, the Democrat voted and mailed it back the same day.

“I was on it because that’s what I do,” the 79-year-old retired law enforcement officer said. “I don’t let it sit around.”

About a week later, he heard the state’s mail ballot vendor had made a coding error, causing some voters to receive the wrong party’s ballot.

Hill’s ballot looked correct to him. So he thought he was OK. But he learned at a May 18 campaign event he’d have to vote using a replacement ballot, as instructed by the State Board of Elections.

“It’s caused a lot of confusion,” he said.

Hill was one of hundreds of thousands of voters who had received their ballot before the vendor, Taylor Print & Visuals Inc., told the Maryland State Board of Elections it had made a mistake.

Elections Administrator Jared DeMarinis ordered a do-over, and Hill and others will have to vote again.

DeMarinis said reissuing more than 447,000 ballots was “the only course of action to ensure the integrity and security of mail-in voting,” because the company couldn’t isolate which voters received the wrong party’s ballot.

Maryland’s mix-up has fueled existing bipartisan tensions over a voting method that has become as politicized as the candidates printed on the ballot. The gaffe even caught the attention of President Donald Trump, who has cast, without evidence, mail voter fraud as a foil in his 2020 election loss. Studies, however, have found mail voting expands voter access and fraud is extremely rare.

Voters’ opinions of the debacle and how the state is attempting to correct the error have split mostly along party lines.

Republican Elisabeth Collins ditched voting by mail after receiving a Democratic ballot. She said she’ll vote in person.

Read More

Voter Guide 2026

May 21, 2026

“My first thought was: Did someone do that on purpose?” she said in an interview.

The 69-year-old from Baltimore County said she already lacked trust in elections and most politicians. The mistake and the messaging to destroy a ballot have struck her as “bizarre.”

“You want to trust and believe in the process,” she said. “It’s very suspicious. How do you put your trust in the voting?”

The mistake hands Republicans more grist to claim without evidence that mail voting is fraudulent, Democrat Maureen Malone said.

“It’s really disappointing that they made this kind of an error,” Malone said. “There probably should have been more oversight.”

Voting by mail for the Anne Arundel County resident has become an act of partisan resistance.

“I’m sticking with mail-in ballots,“ the 75-year-old said. ”Because all the lies that are told about them are not made true because of this error.”

Most Democrats, including Malone, took the error in stride, saying they trusted the state’s fix and commended the elections board’s communication and transparency.

Anne Pfitzer of Montgomery County said the snafu hasn’t affected her trust in the system.

The 59-year-old Democrat recently completed training to become an election judge for the June 23 gubernatorial primary. She’d learned about the controls in place to secure one vote per person.

“The system is there to catch errors,” she said.

Meanwhile, some Republican voters said the error injects confusion into the process and drains confidence in the state’s elections.

“People are legitimately concerned about whether the votes are going to be accurate or not,” said Jackie Gregory, a Cecil County Republican Central Committee member. She was not affected by the ballot error but has heard from voters and is tracking conversations on social media.

Alan Zerbe, a Republican from Harford County, wanted accountability and demanded answers.

“I haven’t heard a word out of my governor; he hasn’t said a peep,” the 75-year-old retired accountant said. ”Somebody in leadership should speak up and say there should be accountability for this.”

Zerbe changed his voter registration to Republican from unaffiliated so he could vote for a candidate to go against Gov. Wes Moore. He plans to switch back after the primary.

Moore’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the ballot issue. The governor is not responsible for administering elections. The state’s board of elections is, and the top election official, DeMarinis, is elected by the bipartisan board.

Zerbe said he’ll use his replacement ballot and is not concerned about the integrity of the primary.

“If I lived in a purple state maybe, but not in Maryland — no,” he said.