County Election Board

With nine votes separating the top two contenders, the GOP nomination for state comptroller will not be decided before Monday, when absentee ballots are to be counted in Prince George's County.Through yesterday -- when election officials finished counting absentee ballots in Baltimore and 22 of the state's 23 counties -- Owings Mills accountant Larry M. Epstein led Washington County banker Timothy R. Mayberry 42,566 to 42,557."You're kidding me," Robert J. Antonetti Sr., administrator of the Prince George's County election board, said when told that nine votes -- of more than 182,000 votes cast -- separated the two candidates.

Early results from the Baltimore County Election Board showed that a 38-year-old party activist was locked in a tight race over Baltimore County Councilman Louis L. DePazzo for the Democratic nomination for the southeast's 7th Councilmanic District.John A. "Johnny O" Olszewski, who works for a firm that prepares autos for showrooms, trailed DePazzo by slightly more than 100 votes, with about half of the precincts reporting. Olszewski worked methodically for months with backing from the large Battle Grove Democratic Club to erode support for the 65-year-old incumbent.

Early results from the Baltimore County Election Board showed that a 38-year-old party activist was locked in a tight race over Baltimore County Councilman Louis L. DePazzo for the Democratic nomination for the southeast's 7th Councilmanic District.John A. "Johnny O" Olszewski, who works for a firm that prepares autos for showrooms, trailed DePazzo by slightly more than 100 votes, with about half of the precincts reporting. Olszewski worked methodically for months with backing from the large Battle Grove Democratic Club to erode support for the 65-year-old incumbent.

In yesterday's editions, the number of absentee ballots returned to the Baltimore County election board for the 7th Congressional District race was incorrectly reported. The number of ballots returned was about 400.The Sun regrets the error.Baltimore city and county voters in the 7th Congressional District are expected to come out in record numbers today for the special election to pick a successor to former Rep. Kweisi Mfume.Those would be record low numbers, election officials fear."It's going to be a sorry election," said Doris J. Suter, Baltimore County election administrator.

In yesterday's editions, the number of absentee ballots returned to the Baltimore County election board for the 7th Congressional District race was incorrectly reported. The number of ballots returned was about 400.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 4/17/96

In yesterday's editions, the number of absentee ballots returned to the Baltimore County election board for the 7th Congressional District race was incorrectly reported. The number of ballots returned was about 400.The Sun regrets the error.Baltimore city and county voters in the 7th Congressional District are expected to come out in record numbers today for the special election to pick a successor to former Rep. Kweisi Mfume.Those would be record low numbers, election officials fear."It's going to be a sorry election," said Doris J. Suter, Baltimore County election administrator.

An aide to former County Executive O. James Lighthizer has joined the hunt for the county's top elective post, setting the table for a political primary that one Democratic official predicted will be a "blood bath."Robert Agee, known as a trouble shooter in the Lighthizer administration, said yesterday that he intends to run for the Democratic nomination for county executive.Mr. Agee, 45, of Crofton said he has appointed a finance rTC committee and expects to hold a $100-a-ticket fund-raiser on June 21.He could face state Del. Theodore J. Sophocleus, who announced his intentions last week, in the September primary.

Thomas L. Bromwell, head of Baltimore County's state senators, beat back a determined Republican challenger to win a fourth term yesterday, but in a stunning defeat, House Majority Leader Kenneth H. Masters of Catonsville lost his seat and the county's only powerful leadership position in the General Assembly.Senator Bromwell defeated the GOP challenger, Del. John J. Bishop Jr., 45, by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent and proclaimed it "a sweet victory after a tough primary and a tough general election.

The county election board voted 2-to-1 along party lines Monday to accept district boundaries contained in a Dec. 2 resolution of the County Council.District lines must be redrawn after every census to reflect population changes. The boundaries accepted by the election board Monday are identical to those approved by the council Nov. 4 andvetoed by County Executive Charles I. Ecker Nov. 12.Following the veto, council Democrats relied on $7,686 worth of legal advice from former U.S. Attorney Benjamin R. Civiletti to push through a resolution creating district lines identical to those in thevetoed bill.

Disturbed by election results that contradicted polls and their own political thinking, campaign aides of Theodore J. Sophocleus, the defeated Anne Arundel County executive candidate, asked yesterday for a recount of the ballots in 22 precincts.The precincts are in northern Anne Arundel's 2nd and 3rd Councilmanic districts -- including the Glen Burnie area and Pasadena -- where Mr. Sophocleus, a Democratic councilman from Linthicum, had been expected to do well on Election Day in his contest with Republican Robert R. Neall.

Maryland's election board voted unanimously Thursday to impose stricter rules on referendum petition drives, based on a Court of Appeals ruling that critics say will make it much harder for citizens to take an issue to the voters. The board voted 4-0 with one member absent. Under the new rules, people signing petitions must use either their full name, including middle initials, or sign their name exactly as it appears on election board voting rolls. In addition, a printed name required on a petition must exactly match the accompanying signature.

The fight over an attempt to block a 55,000-square-foot supermarket from being built as part of a village center-style development at Turf Valley in western Ellicott City is intensifying. The County Council approved a bill in November allowing the supermarket to be larger than the 18,000-square-foot limit in earlier regulations, but some residents objected and began a petition drive for a referendum in the November 2010 elections. Marc Norman, a Turf Valley resident and persistent critic of growth plans at the 800-acre hotel/golf course community submitted petitions Feb. 3 containing 6,079 signatures.

ABSENTEE BALLOTS Applications for absentee ballots received by the county election board as of late Friday: 10,400 Absentee ballots cast in the September primary: 1,538 2004 general election: 7,024 2002 general election: 3,576 VOTING INFO The county's 69 polling precincts will be open for voting from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Delays can be avoided by voting between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The general election is open to all registered voters. The name and location of where you are assigned to vote is listed on your voter's card.

Leaders of a grass-roots revolt against an omnibus Howard County zoning bill have submitted nearly 4,900 signatures to the election board to force the issue to referendum, virtually assuring it will appear on next year's ballot. The county charter requires 5,000 valid voters' signatures to hold a referendum on a County Council bill, and this week's submission gives the protesters until June 8 to collect the total of 7,000 names they are seeking, just to be sure. "Our hard work lies ahead of us," said Ellen Rhudy of Marriottsville, a petition volunteer who was looking ahead to the campaign to persuade a majority of county voters to defeat the more than 40 zoning and zoning language changes in the bill when they vote in November 2006.

Add one more sin to the evils of suburban sprawl - commuter fatigue that can theoretically cut voter turnout 2 percent to 3 percent in some precincts. In a close race like the 2000 presidential contest, that can be a vital difference, according to a research paper on voting that year in Howard, Frederick and Montgomery counties by University of Maryland political scientist James G. Gimpel. His theory is simple enough, though not everyone agrees with the concept - that after a long, traffic-clogged drive to and from work, with family waiting at home, some marginally committed voters may skip their patriotic duty rather than face another 5-mile drive to vote.

Knowing he would be away, Paul L. Spadin of Fulton carefully made out an absentee ballot and mailed it Sept. 6 - four days before the primary election. That's why he was shocked Saturday when he received a letter from the Howard County Election Board telling him his ballot was not counted because it arrived too late. "I was irritated that I followed all the rules and I mailed it early and it didn't get here," Spadin said. His ballot arrived Sept. 13, two days after the deadline. Now Spadin, 66, is going to Circuit Court to seek redress as the county election board tries to figure out - before the Nov. 5 general election - what went wrong with his and about two dozen other absentee ballots that took up to nine days to get from various Howard County locations to the board's offices.

Knowing he would be away, Paul L. Spadin of Fulton carefully made out an absentee ballot and mailed it Sept. 6 - four days before the primary election. That's why he was shocked Saturday when he received a letter from the Howard County Election Board telling him his ballot was not counted because it arrived too late. "I was irritated that I followed all the rules and I mailed it early and it didn't get here," Spadin said. His ballot arrived Sept. 13, two days after the deadline. Now Spadin, 66, is going to Circuit Court to seek redress as the county election board tries to figure out - before the Nov. 5 general election - what went wrong with his and about two dozen other absentee ballots that took up to nine days to get from various Howard County locations to the board's offices.

Joan Lancos - the Republican candidate for County Council in heavily Democratic west Columbia - thinks her chances of winning in that race just improved. Mary Kay Sigaty, barely defeated in the closely fought Democratic primary last week, shares a long community-volunteer background with Lancos that overlaps to the point that both sat on the same school boundary-lines advisory committee last year. Columbia native Kenneth S. Ulman, the standard-bearer for his party in District 4 now that Sigaty has conceded, has state and national political experience - from campaigning for Bill Clinton in 1996 to advising Gov. Parris N. Glendening on expenditures.

AS PART of its 148th anniversary celebration, Pumphrey's St. John's United Methodist Church will present a concert Oct. 8 by singer and native Baltimorean Sherry Lynn Hunt. Hunt is choir director of the city's New Shiloh Baptist Church. But she has performed well beyond its borders - throughout the United States and in France, Switzerland, Canada and the former Soviet Union. She has shared the stage with the Morgan State University Choir and performed at the inaugural ceremonies of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume.

Incumbent Stephen C. Bounds held a comfortable lead over a field of 17 other Howard County school board candidates last night, according to preliminary results in the nonpartisan primary election. Bounds, who says the county should give residents more of a voice in redistricting, had 8,414 votes -- or 11 percent -- with 85 precincts reporting. Following him were Virginia Charles with 6,509 votes, Jerry D. Johnston with 6,426 votes and Patricia S. Gordon with 6,265 votes. Glenn Amato had 6,049 votes, and Michele Williams had 6,010.