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| The validity of this article as a news story is, as written, disputed. Wikinews does not publish reports on events that are not sufficiently recent. For synthesis, new details must have come to light within the past two or three days, and the news event itself must have happened within a week. Unless sources can be found and a news event chosen to bring this article into compliance with those requirements, the article may be deleted.
If any new details from the last two to three days are newsworthy in their own right then an article could be written with these updates as the actual news event. Exceptions are possible where original reporting adds significant new and newsworthy information to the article.
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Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Maryland state election officials are set to certify the results of recounts in two particularly close Maryland Democratic primary-election races: In the race for a state legislative seat, attorney Sara Love defeated schoolteacher Samir Paul as Democratic nominee by a margin of 12 votes, and in the race for Montgomery county executive, county council member Marc Elrich beat businessman David Blair for the Democratic nomination by 77 votes. Before this, according to a county election board spokesperson, there had not been a recount in Montgomery County for 20 years. The primary-election winners will appear on the general election ballot November 6.
In Maryland’s 16th legislative district, which is in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, eight Democrats and one Republican were running for three seats in the House of Delegates. Two of the incumbents, Marc Korman and Ariana Kelly, ran for re-election; the remaining candidates sought to fill the seat vacated by William Frick, outgoing Maryland house majority leader, who chose to run for County Executive instead. Delegates Korman and Kelly received the highest and second highest number of votes in the Democratic primary; former ACLU and NARAL official Sara Love and Montgomery Blair High School computer-science teacher Samir Paul received the third and fourth-highest numbers of votes, respectively, but were separated by a difference of 8 votes. Mr. Paul requested a re-count; under state law, when the margin of victory is less than 0.1%, the runner-up may petition for all ballots to be recounted at county expense. After the recount, Ms. Love’s margin of victory over Mr. Paul increased to 12 votes. Mr. Korman, Ms. Kelly, Ms. Love, and Republican Bill Day will face off in the November general election. Mr. Day was the only candidate in the Republican primary. Because of the Maryland closed primary system, Democrats and Republicans do not run against each other until November.
In the race for the state senate seat that represents the same district, incumbent Democrat state senator Susan Lee and Republican challenger Marcus Alzona were unopposed in the party primaries and will run against each other in the general election.
The full results of the Maryland 16th Legislative District House of Delegates Democratic primary election recount are as follows:
| candidate | votes (before recount) | votes (after recount) |
|---|---|---|
| Marc Korman | 13593 | 13598 |
| Ariana Kelly | 12189 | 12197 |
| Sara Love | 11294 | 11299 |
| Samir Paul | 11286 | 11287 |
| Jordan Cooper | 3613 | 3613 |
| Nucchi Currier | 2130 | 2131 |
| Joseph Aloysius Hennessey | 1184 | 1183 |
| Marc Lande | 563 | 563 |
Maryland has a bicameral legislature known as the General Assembly. The state is geographically divided into 47 legislative districts, each represented by 1 state senator and 3 delegates. The senate and delegate races are separate; that is to say, person runs for either house or senate in any given election, but not both. (Some districts are divided into sub-districts, but in districts such as the 16th that are not sub-divided, the top 3 vote-getters in each election for House of Delegates win, the same pattern applying during the party primaries and the general election.) The term of office for both houses of the General Assembly is four years.
In the Democratic primary race for County Executive, Marc Elrich, who currently serves on the county council, defeated businessman David Blair by a margin of 77 votes. This is a change of 2 votes from the 79-vote margin of victory after the initial official, automated count. Because the difference was greater than that which would have entitled Mr. Blair to request a recount at government expense, he requested and received only a partial recount. Mr. Elrich, the winner, will run against lawyer Robin Ficker and, possibly, councilmember Nancy Floreen in the general election. The county executive performs a similar role to that of a city mayor.
Maryland currently uses an optical-scan ballot system, in which voters mark paper ballots, then feed them into a machine; before the current system, the state used touch-screen electronic voting for several years, and before that, Montgomery County used punch-card paper ballots.