Early Voting

Gov. Martin O'Malley said Tuesday he will extend the hours for early voting this week to help make up for the time lost because of storm Sandy. The state's 46 early voting locations will be open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. Early voting originally was to be offered for shorter hours and only through Thursday. O'Malley's changes add 19 hours of voting time, nearly making up for the 20 hours lost when he closed the polls Monday and Tuesday amid heavy wind and rain.

More than 2 feet of snow fell in parts of Garrett and Allegany counties as the remnants of Hurricane Sandy collided with a cold front backed by polar air, closing east- and westbound sections of Interstate 68 in Western Maryland until late Tuesday morning. John Darnley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service's Pittsburgh office, said disruptions to telephone service were hampering efforts to put together a complete picture of the snowfall. But in Oakland, at 2,500 feet above sea level, the service measured 24 inches, with more coming down Tuesday evening.

Gov. Martin O'Malley canceled early voting on Tuesday and added a makeup day on Friday. With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard, O'Malley now has canceled voting on Monday and Tuesday, but added only one makeup day. State elections administrator Linda Lamone said it would not be possible to extend early voting beyond Friday, because poll workers need time to transition to regular voting on Nov. 6. “Everyone needs to...

Gov. Martin O'Malley has canceled Monday's early voting in Maryland due to Hurricane Sandy's expected arrival. Government offices and schools around the region also have announced that they plan to close Monday, and most flights out of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport have been canceled. More than 200 flights scheduled to land at or leave from BWI Monday had already been canceled as of Sunday evening, according to FlightStats.com. Jonathan Dean, a spokesman for the airport, said most carriers had indicated they would cancel all flights Monday and monitor the storm to make a decision about Tuesday and Wednesday.

Voters looking to cast their ballots early found long lines Saturday across Maryland, as the opening of the presidential election met with the urgent preparation for the incoming Hurricane Sandy. Many complained on social media that they waited more than an hour and a half on the first day of early voting, as officials said initial turnout appeared to be far higher than in the last statewide election. Some residents said they wanted to vote as soon as possible so they wouldn't have to worry about it during the storm, expected to start hitting Maryland late Sunday.

Starting Saturday, Marylanders can go to the polls and cast their votes for president and other matters on this fall's ballot. But those who wish to enter the voting booth before Election Day shouldn't wait too long. Maryland's early-voting period runs only through Thursday, a six-day window that is one of the shortest in the country and that could be cut even shorter by Hurricane Sandy. After that, voters will need to wait until Nov. 6. The State Board of Elections is anticipating that as many as 20 percent of Maryland voters will join millions of their fellow Americans in the increasingly popular practice of casting their ballots in person before Election Day. Other Marylanders who like to get a jump on things have been voting by mail, using absentee ballots, since Sept.

Kemba Smith Pradia went to Tallahassee, Fla., last week to demand the right to vote. Back in the '90s, when she was just Kemba Smith, she became a poster child for the excesses and inanities of the so-called War on Drugs. Ms. Pradia, then a college student in Virginia, became involved with, and terrorized by, a man who choked and punched her regularly and viciously. By the impenetrable logic of battered women, she thought it was her fault. The boyfriend was a drug dealer. Pradia never handled drugs, never used drugs, never sold drugs.

Despite high-profile races — including a Republican presidential contest that brought the candidates swinging through the state and a nationally significant House race in Western Maryland — elections officials predict that turnout could fall to near-record lows in Tuesday's primary. The ho-hum reaction in Maryland is being driven by several factors: lack of a competitive race at the top of the Democratic ticket; a primary date that falls in the middle of spring break for many schools; and the inability of most of the GOP presidential candidates to organize in one of the bluest states in the nation.

With a local judicial race, a couple of congressional nominations and the Republican presidential nomination hanging in the balance, Harford County voters will have something to decide if they bother to show up at the polls for Tuesday's presidential primary election. Six days of early voting for the primary closed Thursday evening with 3,246 casting ballots at the McFaul Activity Center in Bel Air. The total represents 2.56 percent of Harford's 126,736 registered Republican and Democratic voters, according to the Maryland Board of Elections.

With the addition of early voting to the local political scene, a new dynamic has been added to the electoral process. Even so, it appears based on turnout the tradition of going out to vote on an official Election Day has something of a luster that doesn't carry over to the election days of the early voting schedule. Either way, the early voting participation numbers indicate voter turnout will be anemic come Tuesday, April 3. That's not just a shame. It's a disgrace. Men and women remain in harm's way overseas fighting to secure a nation - actually more of an ungovernable territory - that was used as base of operations for the9/11attacks of a decade ago. In other words, they're fighting to protect our basic freedoms from those who would impose a particular brand of tyranny, the imposition of a particular variety of religious law. This is counter to our tradition of acknowledging that the almighty is revealed to different people in different ways, and that faith is a matter of personal choice.