Elections office seeks more judges at polls for Nov. 7 (SoMdNews.com)

Friday, Sept. 29, 2006

By John Wharton


St. Mary’s voters and election officials withstood the Sept. 12 primary with fewer problems than their counterparts in some other areas of the state, but more judges are needed to help out at the county’s 30 polling places in the November general election.

Ideally, 10 to 12 people put in the more than 16 hours required at each precinct to make sure the voting goes accurately and equitably, but the local elections office has to take what it can get from the two major political parties, Democratic and Republican.

‘‘We usually try to get half and half,” Catherine Countiss, director of the St. Mary’s County Board of Elections, said this week at her office in Leonardtown. ‘‘We need to have two of each party, except at a very small precinct.”

They get by with one of each stripe at the 9th District, St. George Island.

Countiss said she expected to get by with fewer polling place judges during this year’s balloting when there were plans to allow early voting, but a court threw out that plan.
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more: http://www.somdnews.com/stories/092906/entefea180934_32112.shtml