TALES from the primary elections wars:

A voter entered the polling booth at a Baltimore County station, spent his allotted time making choices and then emerged from the opened curtain looking somewhat perplexed.

"I couldn't find Bentley's name on the ballot," he remarked to his spouse as they departed together.

"That's because she's a Republican. You know you're registered as Democrat," she reminded him. Embarrassed silence.

* * * An election judge in Howard County had a problem.

A person wanted to vote in her precinct, but was registered as living in Baltimore County. The judge telephoned the Board of Elections Supervisors for help.

"Are they having an election in Baltimore County, too?" she asked the astonished board employee.

* * * Before entering a Harford County polling station, a voter was handed a card with the name of a candidate by a campaign worker in the parking lot.

"If I weren't intelligent enough to know who I'm going to vote for already, I wouldn't have shown up here," the voter said as he brushed by to enter the school building.

"Just wanted to make sure you knew how to spell his name," nTC offered the campaigner, in a back-handed apology.