Two of the three Cecil County Council races being contested in 2022 are close enough to require the full count to ascertain a clear winner – incumbents Bill Coutz and Al Miller both trail narrowly on their races.

Cecil County, unique in Maryland for its staggered terms across each even-year election, had three of its five council seats up for election in 2022. Of the three, two of the seats have very close Republican primaries, meaning the results will not be known with certainty until the final votes are tallied in the days ahead.

In District 2, incumbent Council Member Bill Coutz trails Rebecca Hamilton by 401 votes. In District 3, incumbent Al Miller trails challenger Bob Gatchel by a mere five votes.

Full Cecil County results are available on the State Board 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.