Absentee ballots from South Carolina were found in Maryland this week, and South Carolina officials are blaming a Minnesota printing company used by several heavily populated counties.
The same vending is being blamed by Maryland officials for delays in delivering absentee ballots to the state for its June 2 primaries.
About 20 absentee ballots for Charleston County somehow were delivered to officials in Baltimore, the Post and Courier reported this week. A state election board official said it’s just one of several problems with SeaChange Print Innovations of Minnesota, which prints and mails absentee ballots for 13 South Carolina counties.
A spokesman for the election board said the state might discourage counties from using the vendor to print absentee ballots or cut off its contracts. South Carolina’s primary for state and local seats is on June 9; an official for SeaChange declined comment to the newspaper.
The same vendor failed to mail hundreds of thousands of ballots to Baltimore voters for nearly a week despite assuring Maryland they were on the way, the Baltimore Sun reported. U.S. Postal Service trucks have been driving overnight shifts since officials learned of the problem last weekend, transporting ballots from Minnesota to Maryland where they are placed into the local mail system, said Nikki Charlson, deputy administrator of the Maryland Board of Elections, told the Sun.
Maryland is mailing ballots to about 4 million voters for the primary, which is being held largely by mail due to the coronavirus crisis. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan postponed the primary from April to June.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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