Early voting results show four Howard school board candidates with large margins in their districts

The winners in the five districts will make up the first Board of Education in Howard County to be voted in by residents in a district instead of the entire county. Current Vice Chair Vicky Cutroneo and member Chao Wu will remain on the board through 2022, serving as the first two at-large members in the new system.

In addition to the five local Board of Education, national and state races, Howard County’s ballot also featured Howard County Circuit Court judge and three county referendum questions.

Quincy Coleman (52.3%) is leading incumbent John Kuchno (47.7%) in the Circuit Court judge race among the race’s 105,784 votes from early voters and some of the county’s mail voters.

All three county referendum questions have significant support so far.

The first question, which proposes changing the dates for the County County to appoint members to the Councilmanic Redistricting Commission, has 72.3% support. The second question, asking voters to shorten appointment terms for citizen boards from five years to three, has 87.8% support. The final question, which would add several anti-discriminatory clauses to the charter for the first time since the 1960s, has 80% support.

Prior to Election Day, a record number of Howard County residents had already voted. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, voters across the county requested mail ballots at a higher rate than almost any other jurisdiction in the state, second only to Montgomery County, and voted early in-person more than any year in history, according to election officials.

Nearly 108,000 Howard County residents requested a vote-by-mail ballot by the Oct. 20 deadline. As of Nov. 2, almost 91,000 of those ballots had been received by the Howard County Board of Elections. Those ballots, as long as they are postmarked by Nov. 3, could continue trickling in through Nov. 13.

In addition to those who chose to vote via a mail ballot, approximately 60,000 Howard County residents voted in person before Election Day at one of the county’s five early voting centers. The first day of early voting on Oct. 26 had long lines in the morning, as a single-day record of 11,580 people voted throughout the day, according to election officials. The lines subsided as the day and week of early voting continued.

The 60,715 people who voted early during the eight days before Election Day this year is slightly higher than the 59,054 people who did so in 2016; however, by percentage, 2016 was higher, as the number of registered voters in the county has increased by about 19,000 voters in the past four years.

Overall, at least 152,270 people cast their ballots before Election Day in Howard, with up to about 16,000 mail ballots that were requested by voters but have yet to be returned to the elections office.

With about 226,000 active registered voters in the county, the early voting turnout represents about 67% of the county’s voters and 93% of the total turnout from the 2016 general election (163,668). In 2016, Howard County’s total turnout was 78.97%, the highest percentage of any county in the state.