Absentee

DEPENDING ON who you are, the Parks Heights Avenue-Reisterstown Road corridor is either bathed in a nostalgic glow or is defined by the harsh realities of crime and grime. A turn-of-the-century "streetcar neighborhood," the area experienced rapid racial change in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the loss of its middle-class social glue in a flight to the suburbs.Despite sporadic city efforts over three decades, nothing has managed to arrest the deterioration of the area that is home to about 17,000 Baltimoreans.

Voters who want to cast an absentee ballot in Maryland's Sept. 15 primary election must fill out an application by the close of business Tuesday.Applications are available at local election board offices in Baltimore and the state's 23 counties. After applying, registered voters will be given their ballots, which must be returned with a postmark no later than Sept. 14.Voters who find in the next few days that an emergency has forced them to vote by absentee ballot have until Wednesday to submit an application.

Absentee ballots counted late last week apparently left the results of Tuesday's elections unchanged, although Republican county executive candidate Christopher J. Merdon did gain some ground on Democrat Ken Ulman. According to a county elections board tally of 10,099 ballots completed Friday afternoon, Merdon gained 1,650 votes on Ulman, which still left him more than 8,000 votes behind the Democrat. Merdon conceded his loss Wednesday. In the nonpartisan school board election, Janet Siddiqui, who finished sixth, gained 78 votes on fifth-place finisher Ellen Flynn Giles, although Giles is still more than 1,200 votes ahead.

Both major candidates for governor of Maryland now urge their supporters to vote absentee - pretend they're going to be away on Election Day. It's a high-level vote of no confidence in the system. Even as they seek the highest office in the state, the contenders say they don't trust the system that would take them there. How should the rest of us feel? The late, lamented primary election's biggest loser was, in case you hadn't noticed, public confidence in the election system. It's a crisis that has provoked defensive reactions from the candidates, but has not inspired anyone to take charge and fix the problems in a transparent way. Oh sure, there's hand-wringing and explaining and demonstrating.

Maryland's Board of Elections has acknowledged sending out some incomplete absentee ballots and some with incorrect address information, but officials say both problems were limited in scope and have been resolved. A handful of voters in Montgomery and Prince George's counties received ballots that did not include a page with some of the state's controversial referendum questions - including whether to allow same-sex marriage, expand gambling and extend in-state tuition discounts to some illegal immigrants.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. - Wildlife biologists are baffled and intrigued by two incidents captured on videotape at a bald eagle nest in Portsmouth - an eagle parent attacks, kills, then eats its two scrawny young. "We've never seen anything like this," said Bryan Watts, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary, which was monitoring the nest with a 24-hour camera. Watts and colleague Mitchell Byrd, a renowned eagle expert in Virginia, contacted other scientists after viewing the footage and found that cannibalism among the nation's signature bird has never been documented or even suspected.

AlleganyAbsentee ballots counted for governor -- 678Absentee ballots for Glendening -- 318Absentee ballots for Sauerbrey -- 360Percent of absentee for Sauerbrey -- 53.1Glendening Election Day total -- 8,970Sauerbrey Election Day total -- 11,928Percent of Tuesday vote for Sauerbrey -- 57.1Anne ArundelAbsentee ballots counted for governor -- 3,805Absentee ballots for Glendening -- 1,482Absentee ballots for Sauerbrey -- 2,323Percent of absentee for Sauerbrey --...

Wilde Lake village officials are asking residents expecting to receive mailed absentee ballots to come to Slayton House, the village association headquarters, and pick them up instead. The bulk mail of roughly 2,800 absentee ballots, mailed late last month, have not been accounted for, said Bernice Kish, the village manager. She said the post office is trying to trace the mailed ballots. Wilde Lake elections are scheduled for April 22. Kish said the absentee ballots have to be signed by residents and returned by the election date.

Maryland Republicans figured early on that this year's election for governor might be so close that it would come down to a count of absentee ballots.So, a couple months ago, the Maryland Republican Party mailed an absentee ballot application to every registered Republican in the state -- 489,000 pieces of mail in all.State election officials say they have no idea how many of those Republican ballots were returned, nor for that matter how many have come in from the Democrats.Officials know that just over 50,000 absentee ballot requests were made, but they do not know how many people voted absentee.