Maryland closed out its third day of election gridlock today after challenges by both parties stalled the counting of thousands of absentee ballots crucial to the outcome of the governor's race.
State election officials said they hoped to have a complete tally by tonight but that it may take until tomorrow.
Yesterday, elections board offices in Montgomery County, Baltimore City and Baltimore County were jammed with lawyers and political partisans arguing, debating and closely scrutinizing ballots.
Democrats generally challenged ballots filed in those counties that supported the Republican, Del. Ellen R. Sauerbrey. Republicans, meanwhile, objected to ballots in strongholds of the Democrat, Prince George's County Executive Parris N. Glendening.
Republican lawyers threatened to go to court to attempt to throw out all 8,745 absentee ballots filed in Montgomery County, a bastion of support for Mr. Glendening.
Among those ballots are those of conservative columnist George Will, who praised Mrs. Sauerbrey recently as Maryland's Margaret Thatcher; Jack Kemp, the former U.S. housing secretary who campaigned for Mrs. Sauerbrey; and Paul Tagliabue, commissioner of the National Football League.
"It's the Super Bowl of politics in sudden-death overtime," said Gene M. Raynor, the state elections administrator, who spent the day at the Baltimore city elections board.
With reports in from 18 counties, Mrs. Sauerbrey had 12,037 absentee votes and Mr. Glendening 7,592.
That cut his 6,187-vote lead in Tuesday's balloting to just 1,742 by last night.
But the absentee votes counted so far came from rural counties and the Baltimore suburbs, Mrs. Sauerbrey's strongholds. And in most of those areas, Mr. Glendening was receiving about the same percentage of the absentee votes as he did at the polls Tuesday.
Should that trend hold, Mr. Glendening would wind up the victor when the three subdivisions he carried Tuesday -- Baltimore City and Prince George's and Montgomery counties -- are finally counted.
The Glendening campaign, in a written statement, said the results so far "reinforce our confidence that Parris Glendening will win this election." But Mrs. Sauerbrey insisted yesterday that she will win.
"It's very clear that we will have no final result in this election for some time to come," Mrs. Sauerbrey said at her Cockeysville headquarters. "I am putting my opponent on notice. I am conceding nothing. There is no governor-elect."
Even after the absentee ballots are added to Tuesday's tally, the process won't be over. Election officials will spend much of next week reviewing the Tuesday returns from all 1,702 polling places across the state. Only when they've finished will they certify official results, expected to happen next Friday.
Mrs. Sauerbrey yesterday repeated charges that the voting was marred by "improprieties," handing out a copy of an Oct. 27 memo on Glendening campaign stationery offering money to workers to help get out the vote on Election Day.
"It offered a $25 stipend for that kind of activity," Mrs. Sauerbrey said. "I think that's called walking-around money."
State law bans candidates from paying campaign workers for many Election Day activities.
Emily Smith, Mr. Glendening's campaign manager, responded to Mrs. Sauerbrey's allegation by saying there was never a plan to pay walk-around money and none was ever paid.
As for the memo, Ms. Smith said it was transmitted by the state Democratic Party, which planned to pay the $25 in lieu of providing meals on Election Day for volunteers. The Glendening letterhead was part of the supplies and equipment turned over ** to the state party after the primary election, she said.
Former Gov. Harry R. Hughes, the chairman of the state party, gave the same account. "I think it was an innocent mistake," he said of the memo. He added that the stipends were not paid and that the party provided meals to the workers instead.
Mrs. Sauerbrey also cited a report that about 1,000 ballots were not counted in Montgomery County Tuesdaybecause of a mechanical foul-up.
The actual number was about 500, said Carol S. Evans, administrator of Montgomery County's election board.
She said the ballots will be counted along with the absentee votes, and said similar mistakes are made and caught every election.
Republicans appeared to be the first to launch a wholesale challenge of absentee ballots yesterday, when they told Montgomery County election officials that many absentee voters hadn't signed required affidavits.
Those affidavits affirm, under penalty of perjury, the voter's identity and state his or her reason for not being able to vote at the polls.
By law, affidavits must be on file for every absentee ballot received.
But absentee ballots seldom make the difference in a high-profile race, and in practice election boards around the state have not always required them.
Democrats responded by themselves challenging absentee ballots in Baltimore County, Harford County and elsewhere.
By noon, Mr. Raynor sent a notice to all 24 local election boards asking them not to open or count any absentee ballots without an affidavit. If boards decided to do so anyway, he advised that those ballots be put to one side and counted separately. That way, those ballots could later be challenged if necessary.
After spending the day listening to challenges, Baltimore's election board declared a recess about 8 p.m. without having counted a single absentee vote.
The board voted to give representatives of the candidates six hours -- from 6 a.m. to noon today -- to compare signatures on some 3,500 ballot envelopes with registration forms in file in the office, a procedure sought by the Sauerbrey camp and protested by Mr. Glendening's.
In Baltimore County, Democrats demanded to check the signature on each of 6,567 absentee ballot envelopes against the signature as recorded on the voting rolls. They wound up challenging more than two-thirds of the ballots because there were no signed affidavits on file for them.
Joseph Karey, the election board's lawyer, said counting ballots without affidavits had been done "in many, many elections and I don't think we should change it now, even though it might change the election."
The board, two Democrats and one Republican, agreed. "I don't think we have the right not to count them," said Jacqueline K. McDaniel, a Democratic member. Henry Abrams, a lawyer representing the Glendening camp, said that to count the challenged ballots "would undermine the integrity of the process. Other jurisdictions have excluded them."
The Baltimore County board ultimately decided to count the ballots, but to keep the challenged ballots separate from those accepted by both parties. David Nevins, a Glendening spokesman, denied that the tactic was retaliation for a similar move by the Sauerbrey campaign elsewhere. "It's just because we want to make sure the law is followed and that there are no irregularities," he said.
Several anxious candidates spent the day at the county board office. One was Republican Nancy Hastings of Kingsville, who was 62 votes out of third place and a House of Delegates seat from the 6th District.
In Howard County, Glendening supporters challenged 71 of 3,022 absentee ballots but succeeded in knocking out only 10 of them.
Democrats objected to envelopes that had not been stamped with the date and time that they arrived at the election board. They challenged ballots where voters signed but did not print their names on a required inner envelope, which contains the ballot. They asked the board to toss out ballots where the mailing envelopes were sealed, but the inner en velopes were not.
In the case of several ballots lacking a time and date stamp, employees said under oath that the disputed ballots -- one from an election judge -- were received prior to the deadline of 4 p.m. Wednesday.
After hearing from employees, board member Mary B. Zeigler said she had been given an absentee ballot on election night and had forgotten to stamp it until an employee reminded her to do so.
"For us to unilaterally throw out ballots and deprive people of their vote for something that was not their fault is unacceptable," she said.
In Harford County, where support for Mrs. Sauerbrey is strong, a Glendening supporter challenged the absentee ballot of a nursing home patient who had bandaged arms and couldn't fill out the ballot. Two election officials marked her choices while a nurse witnessed the vote.
"I think what's going on here is absolutely mean-spirited," said James F. Fanseen, a Sauerbrey supporter.
Democrats challenged erasures or slight tears on ballots, or slightly torn envelopes. At one point last night, Rita Dather, Harford County's election administrator, cried because of Democratic criticism.
Predictably, the two camps offered different interpretations of what was going on yesterday.
State Delegate Maggie McIntosh of Baltimore, vice chairwoman of the state Democratic Party, said Mrs. Sauerbrey wasn't winning by high enough margins in the rural counties -- where her support is strongest -- to eventually erase the lead Mr. Glendening built Tuesday.
The GOP, Ms. McIntosh charged, hopes "to fool the public into thinking this race is becoming more and more narrow by letting all the suburban counties do their counting tonight, bottle-necking the three major subdivisions."
The purpose, she said, is to rally public support and "to set themselves up for a possible court challenge" of the election result.
Carol L. Hirschburg, spokeswoman for the Sauerbrey campaign, de nied this.
"We have had to deal with these irregularities, which is our right and our responsibility," she said. "We are trying to win this election through the canvass, which includes the absentee ballots. And if after the canvass is completed, there is a basis for a court challenge we will evaluate that option then."
UPDATES
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