County Commissioner Eric Bouchat holds a slight lead for the final seat in a multi-way primary for District 5 seats in the House of Delegates.
A multi-way primary for the three House of Delegates seats in District 5, including most of Carroll County, includes one incumbent and three sitting Carroll County commissioners.
As of Wednesday morning, the tallied vote counts show incumbent Delegate April Rose with over 22 percent and Chris Tomlinson with over 18 percent, substantially ahead of the large remaining field. Commissioner Eric Bouchat currently stands at over 12 percent of the vote in third place (in this race where three winners will advance), but holds a very narrow margin of 31 votes over Sallie Taylor .
Commissioners Dennis Frazier and Steve Wantz, among others, both appear materially behind the top four candidates’ vote totals. The top three vote-getters will advance to an uncontested general election, and are very likely to be elected to the House for the coming term.
Full unofficial results for Delegate races are available on the State Department of Elections website.
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Please note that vote counts are incomplete. Election officials still have to count mail-in and provisional ballots. For context, more than 500,000 Marylanders requested a mail-in ballot for this year’s primary, and those remaining votes are likely to be material to many contested races. However, local boards of elections cannot begin to canvass mail-in votes until Thursday, July 21. For editorial purposes, MACo coverage will describe any races where the top runner-up remains within 10 percent of the apparent winner(s) as “pending” and those results as “apparent.”
MACo’s election coverage and analysis relies on unofficial results published by the State Board of Elections. Official results will follow after a full accounting of pending votes. Given delays in processing an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots, MACo advises readers that any close unofficial results are subject to realignment in the days ahead.
