By Adam Pagnucco.
Four years ago, I was working for county executive candidate David Blair. On primary election night (July 19), Blair held a 1,062 vote lead over incumbent Marc Elrich. By the time the votes were all counted, Elrich prevailed by 32 votes. The reason for the shift was that Elrich carried mail votes which had not fully come in as of election night. I later told the story of how those numbers moved during the count in a process that I’m sure was excruciating for both campaigns.
Now we are looking at a new election in which mail and perhaps provisional votes could conceivably shift the outcome of three races: county executive, council at-large and Council District 3. Could it happen again?
Before asking that question, let’s go over a number of assumptions that are required for such an analysis. Early votes and election day votes are now in. Some mail ballots have been counted but a lot more have not been. Provisional ballots have not been counted. The latter two categories will decide close races.
In the 2022 Democratic primary, 64,165 mail ballots and 6,431 provisional ballots were cast. This year, the number of Dem mail ballots sent to voters is very close to what it was in 2022. Combined early vote and election day turnout is also close between the two years, suggesting the number of provisional ballots won’t be terribly different. Those phenomena guide my assumptions in this analysis.
One more thing that matters: while the Apple Ballot is the most influential endorsement in MoCo, non-incumbents with the Apple Ballot have so far underperformed in mail voting when compared with in-person (early plus election day) voting. Consider these stats for the following Apple Ballot holders: Will Jawando in the executive race, Fatmata Barrie and Josie Caballero in the at-large race, Julie Yang in District 1 and Izola Shaw in District 3 as of this writing.
Jawando percentage, in-person: 43%
Jawando percentage, mail: 31%
Barrie plus Caballero percentage, in-person: 20%
Barrie plus Caballero percentage, mail: 16%
Yang percentage, in-person: 52%
Yang percentage, mail: 44%
Shaw percentage, in-person: 47%
Shaw percentage, mail: 35%
See the drop-offs?
Let’s start with the executive race. As of now, Jawando has a 6,549 lead over Andrew Friedson (7.3 points). However, Friedson has a 1,400 mail ballot lead over Jawando (8.2 points). Will more mail ballots close the gap for Friedson?
Let’s assume that the number of mail ballots cast in this race will be roughly equal to last time since the number of mail ballots sent to voters is roughly equivalent. Then let’s assume that the percentages of mail votes received by each of the candidates remain the same as the ones that have already been counted. Finally, let’s assume that provisional votes will be similar in number to last time and will be distributed among the candidates in the same manner as in-person votes.
Here is the ultimate outcome under all of those assumptions.
Jawando: 52,873 votes (37.8%)
Friedson: 49,322 votes (35.2%)
Evan Glass: 31,487 votes (22.5)
Mithun Banerjee: 3,607 votes (2.6%)
Peter James: 2,748 votes (2.0%)
To shift the outcome, Friedson would have to earn 43% of the remaining mail ballots, up from his current 39%, and Jawando would have to earn 27% of the remaining mail ballots, down from his current 31%. That’s not impossible. But Jawando has a clear advantage because of his big edge in in-person voting.
Now let’s get to District 3. As of now, Gaithersburg Mayor Jud Ashman has outpolled Rockville City Council Member Izola Shaw by 285 votes in early voting and 408 votes in mail voting, but trails her by 511 election day votes for a net edge of 182 votes. My assumptions in line with current numbers are that this district will receive 15.8% of the mail ballots cast in the executive race and 11.3% of the provisional votes cast in the executive race (the same ratio as in-person voting). Since I assume that provisional votes will resemble in-person votes, they will help Shaw on net. But let’s assume for the moment that future mail votes will be distributed in the same way as currently counted ones, favoring Ashman.
Here is the ultimate outcome under all of those assumptions.
Ashman: 8,784 votes (47.3%)
Shaw: 7,556 votes (40.7%)
Allison Eriksen: 2,247 votes (12.1%)
To shift the outcome, Shaw would have to earn 44% of the remaining mail ballots, up from her current 35%, and Ashman would have to earn 42% of the remaining mail ballots, down from his current 50%. That seems unlikely.
Now we get to the closest race of them all: the three-way at-large nailbiter involving Apple candidates Barrie and Caballero along with Board of Education Member Karla Silvestre. (Marc Elrich, Laurie-Anne Sayles and Scott Goldberg currently hold the top three spots.) As of this writing, Barrie has 32,220 total votes (10.4%), Silvestre has 31,380 total votes (10.2%) and Caballero has 28,519 total votes (9.2%). But mail could decide this outcome, and right now, Silvestre has 5,750 mail votes (9.9%), Barrie has 4,952 mail votes (8.5%) and Caballero has 4,616 mail votes (7.9%). Will mail get Silvestre across the finish line?
That is hard to say. Of all these races, the at-large race is the most sensitive to changes in assumptions. My rough math is that if Barrie gets 8.9% of the remaining mail votes (up from her current 8.5%) and Silvestre gets 9.4% of the remaining mail votes (down from her current 9.9%), Barrie will squeak through. Caballero can’t be ruled out either.
I make no prediction on the at-large race. It’s too close, complicated and volatile. Any of these three could be headed to Rockville.