Early Voting

There were times around mid-day outside the polling place at the Westminster Senior Center on March 24 when the campaign volunteers — all three or four of them, standing in the misty rainy chill — easily outnumbered the voters. "It's light, maybe six or eight people an hour," said Krista Kniesler, a candidate for the Carroll County Board of Education, who stood under an umbrella handing out campaign literature in front of the senior center. "Maybe (the light turnout) is because of the rain, or maybe people don't know," about early voting, Kniesler added.

WESTMINSTER — Early voting centers for the 2012 Presidential Primary Election are open for voting Sunday, March 25 from noon to 6 p.m. and March 26-29 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters may vote at a designated early voting center in their county of residence. In Carroll County, an early voting center is being held at Westminster Senior Center, 125 Stoner Ave. in Westminster. More information about early voting is available at http://www.elections.state.md.us/voting/early_voting.html.

Early voting for this year's April 3 federal primary election in Maryland begins Saturday and continues through Thursday. Forty-six early voting centers will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day except for Sunday, when the centers will be open from noon to 6 p.m. A full list of voting centers in the state can be found on the State Board of Elections website at http://www.elections.state.md.us/voting/early_voting.html or by calling 800-222- VOTE...

Your recent editorial stated that there is little reason to require a photo ID to vote ("The phantom menace," Feb. 27). But there is another way to look at this. Two of my children have been away from home for several years, yet they still show up as active voters on the rolls at our precinct, despite my telling officials there that my children have left home. The elections judge writes this down at every election. But when that information gets back to election headquarters, anyone with access could copy those names and use them to cast ballots elsewhere during early voting.

The Carroll County Senate Delegation will host a public hearing and voting session on legislation affecting the county on Friday, Feb. 3, at 2 p.m., at the Carroll County Office Building, 225 N. Center Street, Room 003 (public hearing room), Westminster. The Board of County Commissioners has offered to broadcast the hearing and voting session as a live stream webcast on the county website This legislative package voting session has traditionally been held in Annapolis during the legislative session, but was relocated to Westminster to facilitate public involvement.

Baltimore voters can begin casting ballots in the city's mayoral primary election Thursday, as the early-voting period begins. The city's 369,651 registered voters will be able to go to the polls from Thursday through Saturday and again from Tuesday, Sept. 6, to Thursday, Sept. 8. The five city voting centers will be open from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Candidates said they planned to visit the early voting sites Thursday as the first voters headed to the polls in the citywide races.

Baltimore voters trickled into polling places for the first day of early voting in the citywide primary elections, prompting the director of the city elections board to describe turnout as "really bad. " By 5 p.m., Thursday, 994 of the city's 369,651 registered voters had cast ballots, according to Abigail Goldman, deputy director of the Baltimore City Board of Elections. That's a turnout of 0.3 percent. The city's five early-voting locations were prepared. Board of Elections director Armstead B. Crawley Jones Sr. reported no problems.

From all indications, Harford County has enough registered voters to qualify for two additional early voting sites for next year's presidential election. The state's threshold to qualify for the additional sites is 150,000 voters. That number was reached in the past week. The county's top election official says the Harford Board of Elections plans to recommend to the state board that early voting sites be designated inAberdeen and Edgewood to go along with the existing site inBel Air. We respectfully disagree with such reasoning.

Democratic leaders were so enthusiastic about the 219,000 Marylanders who went to the polls early that on Friday there was already talk of expanding the program for the next election. Gov. Martin O'Malley, who was campaigning in Rockville, said that he'd consider adding more locations in Montgomery and Prince George's counties — where voters stood in long lines to cast ballots. The program, which ended Thursday after six days, attracted 6.3 percent of eligible voters.

Democrats are taking advantage of early voting in greater proportion than Republicans, the state elections board reports, suggesting that the party in power is turning out its base more effectively. In the first three days of early voting, registered Democrats, who make up 56 percent of the Maryland electorate, cast 63 percent of the ballots, according to elections board. Republicans, who make up 26 percent of the electorate, cast 27 percent of the ballots. Some good news for the GOP: Republican voters are outpacing Democrats in the 1st Congressional District, where state Sen. Andy Harris is trying to unseat Rep. Frank Kratovil in the Maryland's most competitive House race this year.