As Republican Ellen R. Sauerbrey's supporters began focusing yesterday on the records of nearly 7,000 Baltimore voters who were not purged from the rolls, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke branded their review in the city as "racist."
Volunteers for Mrs. Sauerbrey, the apparent loser in the Maryland governor's race, are attempting to determine how many of the 6,783 registered voters who should have been deleted from the city lists voted in the Nov. 8 general election.
Those voters were among about 287,000 in the city who were placed in new precincts and districts -- the result of the redistricting after the 1990 Census -- and mailed new voter cards earlier this year, said Barbara E. Jackson, city elections administrator.
The cards for the nearly 7,000 voters now in question were among nearly 20,000 returned by the post office to the city election board during the late spring and summer. Election officials attempted twice to have the new cards delivered, only to have them returned a second time for reasons such as the wrong address, Ms. Jackson said.
Of the roughly 20,000 returned by the post office, election officials dropped 12,880 from the rolls before stopping because of an overwhelming workload, she said. Ms. Jackson said she made the decision to leave the 7,000 voters on the rolls when faced with a choice between taking old voters off the rolls or putting new registrants on.
Jane Williams-Ward, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Sauerbrey, confirmed that the volunteers -- who are flying under the banner of the Maryland Republican Party's Election Inquiry Fund -- were zeroing in on the records of those voters, but would not be specific.
Ms. Williams-Ward also confirmed that teams of Republicans "are taking photographs of abandoned properties throughout the city," one of only three of Maryland's 24 jurisdictions that Democrat Parris N. Glendening, the apparent governor-elect, carried.
Similar actions are taking place in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, the other two jurisdictions that Mr. Glendening carried.
Jack Schwartz, an assistant attorney general for opinions and advice, said last night that the city's leaving 7,000 voters on the books "was not unique" to Baltimore, but said that without
further research he could not speak to its legality.
"This is no different than what has been done in lots of places in Maryland and in lots of elections before this one," Mr. Schwartz said. "The administrative practice has been either to take people off the rolls early enough in the election cycle to afford them the opportunity to re-register, or if it's too late, to give people the opportunity to vote at their former polling place."
The GOP is gathering evidence of irregularities and mistakes by local election boards -- particularly Baltimore City -- to bolster a Sauerbrey legal challenge to the governor's race.
At a news conference earlier in the day, Mr. Schmoke, who supported Mr. Glendening, lashed out at "the Sauerbrey group" for its continuing investigation.
"I found that over the last week the Sauerbrey camp has sunk to new lows in attacking city voters," Mr. Schmoke said.
"I think their attacks are not only disgusting but insulting to our voters.
"And I just believe that what is going on now is not an attempt to show there was fraud, but is just an expedition searching for information that they will probably use for their own purposes somewhere down the road," he said. The mayor declined to speculate as to what those purposes might be.
Asked by a reporter if he was calling the volunteers' efforts "racist," Mr. Schmoke responded: "Yep, yes, absolutely."
"They try to gussy it up, they try to make it look different than it is, but you recall they initially went after only African-American precincts," he said, referring voter information the Republicans sought in seven precincts, just after the election.
"When the reaction to that was so heated and so adverse to them, they expanded it to include other precincts, but that's just a smoke screen for what they're up to," he said. "I consider it just a kind of sophisticated racist activity."
Mrs. Sauerbrey has said she believes that voter fraud may have contributed to the Mr. Glendening's victory margin and that she may contest the results before a Dec. 27 deadline. With just over 1.4 million votes cast, Mr. Glendening appears to have won the governor's race with exactly a 6,000-vote margin over Mrs. Sauerbrey, 708,086 to 702,086, according to certified tallies by the state's 24 local election boards.
Those tallies will change again Monday, when the Anne Arundel County election board is scheduled to recertify its numbers, based on the discovery of 23 absentee ballots, election officials said yesterday.
While Mr. Schmoke did say that he did not "attribute it to the Republican Party, generally," his attack drew a response from the Maryland Republican Party, after the Sauerbrey campaign declined to comment.
Joyce Lyons Terhes, chairwoman of the state party, --ed off a letter to Mr. Schmoke, saying, "We are deeply offended by your accusations with regard to the investigation into the election."
Ms. Terhes said Republicans "abhor racism of any kind, and we strongly believe in the political process."
"You have brought discredit and disharmony to the citizens of the state of Maryland," she wrote. "We demand an immediate apology."
But Mr. Schmoke refused last night. "I don't believe I have a thing to apologize for," he said. "I'm sure that when this entire investigation is complete, that is the Sauerbrey investigation, that my analysis will be shown to be correct."