General Election

The General Assembly on Monday night put the final touch on a measure that delays Baltimore's next local election by a year - aligning the city's voting cycle with the presidential schedule and allowing a one-time, five-year term for MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blakeand other city officials. Supporters said the measure, which moves the next citywide election to November 2016, could boost turnout and save money. The change will save the city $3.7 million because it won't have to run its own election, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Department of Legislative Services.

U.S.House candidate Wendy Rosen shifted her attention to the general election Thursday after her opponent conceded the race for the Democratic nomination in Maryland's 1st District — ending the final disputed contest from last week's statewide primary. Rosen, a Cockeysville businesswoman, led Chestertown physician John LaFerla by 82 votes out of more than 25,000 cast after state election officials had counted most of the absentee and provisional ballots. The district includes portions of Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties as well as the Eastern Shore.

The votes are in, and the results are clear: Baltimore's general election was a nearly complete waste of time, money and effort. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake got about 84 percent of the measly 45,000 votes that were cast. Among the City Council races, only one was close. In most of the rest, the winners of the Democratic primary ran up margins that would make dictators holding sham elections envious. One incumbent, Sharon Green Middleton, got 98 percent of the vote. This exercise cost city taxpayers about $1.5 million, or more than $33 per voter.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's decision today to drop out of the presidential race leaves GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney with a clear path to his party's nomination but a rocky one to an eventual contest with President Barack Obama in the fall. Mr. Santorum, largely viewed as a fringe candidate until his surprising surge in the Iowa caucuses, has provided Mr. Romney with a much stiffer than expected challenge, and overcoming a strong competitor in the primaries has given the former Massachusetts governor an invaluable taste of the kind of battle he will face in the fall.

The contest for two seats on the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court bench will remain a three-way race in the general election, though a challenger came within about 500 votes of ousting one of the sitting judges in last week's primary. Unofficial election returns that include the last of the absentee and provisional ballots counted Wednesday show Laura Kiessling, a recently appointed judge and former prosecutor, as the top vote-getter on both the Democrat and Republican ballots in the nonpartisan race.

Members of the Republican, Green and Libertarian parties are often divided by strong ideological differences in national politics. But in Baltimore, their candidates emphatically agree on at least one thing: They're fed up with the Democratic dominance of city politics. The names of 16 candidates affiliated with one of those three parties will appear on ballots in Tuesday's general election. Although they may lack the name recognition and fat campaign finance accounts of Baltimore's Democratic incumbents, they say they're running to call attention to problems exacerbated by decades of one-party rule.

LUCKHAM, India -- As the daughter of tea pickers who have worked for generations in the green hillsides around this village in southern India, Bhageshwari went to the polls every election day with her parents.Yesterday, at age 20, on a day when India went to the polls at the start of its 11th general election since independence, the young woman was old enough for the first time to vote herself. The election will continue across India with two more voting days, May 2 and 7, and with results expected about May 10.Bhageshwari walked a mile to a polling place in the old fieldstone schoolhouse she attended as a child.

JERUSALEM - A week after plunging back into Israeli politics, Benjamin Netanyahu backed away yesterday from his campaign to wrest the prime minister's job from Ehud Barak by insisting on conditions that Israel's parliament refused to meet. Netanyahu, who polls show would easily defeat Barak if the vote were held now, said he would run only if members of parliament agreed to give up their seats and hold general elections. Lawmakers, many of whom are afraid of losing their seats in a general election, voted 69-49 last night against requiring themselves to stand for re-election.

For decades, Americans have been told that voting in the general election satisfies their civic duty. But in today's world, voting in the general is not enough. The electoral system has morphed to the point where the vast majority of congressional general elections are no longer relevant. Because more than 80 percent of congressional seats are in one-party districts, the key decision is not made in the general election - it is made in the primary of the party that controls that district.

Baltimore voters have the chance tomorrow to close an unusual 14-month gap between the primary and general elections for city offices such as mayor. A proposed charter revision placed on the ballot by the City Council would return the city's general elections to their historical spot in odd-numbered years. The revision would end, for now at least, attempts to have both primary and general elections for Baltimore's municipal offices coincide with the presidential election - which estimates say could save the city well over $1 million.

Two Democratic candidates in Maryland's 1st Congressional District remained locked Thursday in a too-close-to-call contest for the party's nomination, after an initial tally of absentee ballots left them separated by fewer than 100 votes. In the only still-undecided race from Tuesday's statewide primary, Cockeysville businesswoman Wendy Rosen had an 86-vote lead over physician John LaFerla of Chestertown, out of more than 25,000 ballots cast. Rosen has declared victory, but LaFerla has said the race remains too close for him to concede.

Maryland's Republican voters, long marginalized in the selection of the president, may have contributed to the tipping point in the long and unpredictable GOP nominating process. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the Old Line State easily, along with neighboring Washington, D.C. That was no surprise; the relatively affluent, urbanized electorate here has been a strong Romney constituency from the beginning. But the number of delegates Mr. Romney cleared from those contests and from what another win in Wisconsin should mark the beginning of the end of the 2012 primaries and foretell a shift toward the broader debate that will take place before November's general election.

Howard County school board member Allen Dyer, who has battled the panel's attempts to oust him, was eliminated in Tuesday's school board primary, as 14 candidates battled for six spots on November's ballot. The vote comes during a difficult period for the school board, which has been beset by personality clashes, infighting, and calls by some community groups to either resolve conflicts or step down. Challengers have said throughout the campaign that they would work to improve the tenor of discussion, while incumbents have argued that despite their differences they preside over an effective system.

For months, John Delaney ran his campaign for Congress as an outsider. But the day after he crushed his competition for the Democratic nomination in Maryland's 6th District, the Potomac businessman found himself lunching with two of the most powerful party leaders in the state. What's more, his campaign was fielding dozens of calls of support from top state Democrats and labor groups — many of whom had backed his leading opponent, state Sen. Rob Garagiola. Democrats moved rapidly Wednesday to coalesce around the first-time candidate, signaling the beginning of a general election fight for the state's westernmost district that will dominate the political landscape this year and help decide control of the House of Representatives.

Howard County school board member Allen Dyer, who is battling the board's attempts to oust him, lost his bid for re-election Tuesday, finishing eighth among 14 candidates in a primary in which the top six move on to the November election. He will likely continue to face the possibility of being removed before his term expires. Board Chairwoman Sandra French said Wednesday that the panel has no plans to withdraw its request that the state remove Dyer. A board majority voted to have him removed, saying, among other things, that he breached confidentiality requirements and bullied fellow board members.

Cecil County voters Tuesday picked their first nominees for the office of county executive and for the first two seats on their new county council. They also voted to retain two of their sitting circuit court judges, rejecting the challenge to the judges posed by one of the county's state delegates. Voting was light, with more Republicans showing up to the polls than Democrats. The Democratic and Republican county executive nominees chosen Tuesday, who will square off in the November general election, are both women, which means the first person to hold the office of Cecil County Executive will be a female.

As Tuesday's congressional primary approaches, Western Maryland Democrats, longing for a change in representation, have reason to be optimistic. Republicans, on the other hand, have reason to sing the blues. The change in the 6th Congressional District from solid "red" to mostly "blue" illustrates both the strength of the Maryland Democratic Party and the existing convoluted redistricting process - a process badly in need of change. One frustrated Western Maryland Republican delegate, Neil Parrott of Washington County, has started a petition drive to bring the state redistricting map to referendum.

Not everything in Tuesday's primary election came in by deadline for the print edition of The Sun . Here's a look at few races that didn't make today's story . - Republican Daniel Bongino beat Richard J. Douglas in the Senate primary by nearly 9,000 votes, unofficial results show. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, got into the race early and ran an aggressive grassroots campaign. Douglas, a former Pentagon official with an impressive military and legislative background, was never really able to catch up in support or fundraising.

The General Assembly on Monday night put the final touch on a measure that delays Baltimore's next local election by a year - aligning the city's voting cycle with the presidential schedule and allowing a one-time, five-year term for MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blakeand other city officials. Supporters said the measure, which moves the next citywide election to November 2016, could boost turnout and save money. The change will save the city $3.7 million because it won't have to run its own election, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Department of Legislative Services.