By Aldgra Fredly
Contributing Writer
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he will ask the Department of Justice to launch a probe into a mail-in ballot error in Maryland.
Trump’s statement came after the Maryland Board of Elections announced on Friday that some voters had received the wrong party’s ballot for the primary, which will be held on June 23. The agency attributed the issue to a vendor error and said that replacement ballots were being issued.
Maryland State Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis said over 500,000 voters requested mail-in ballots. But the error affected only voters who mailed their ballots before May 14, according to the board.
In a Truth Social post, Trump accused Gov. Wes Moore of allowing the error for political reasons.
“In Maryland, they sent out 500,000 illegal mail-in ballots, and they got caught! So now, they’re going to send out 500,000 more mail-in ballots, but nobody knows what’s happening with the first 500,000 they sent.
“[Moore] allowed this to happen in order to make sure that Democrats win. It never made sense to me that Maryland was considered an automatic Democrat State, but now I see why. I’m sure this has gone on for years,” the president wrote.
In an emailed statement, Moore’s press secretary, Ammar Moussa, rejected Trump’s claims and said the state board of elections disclosed the issue to the public after identifying a vendor error.
“Marylanders should look to the State Board of Elections for accurate information — not social media misinformation designed to undermine confidence in our elections,” Moussa said.
In response, Trump said he has concerns about mail-in ballots and questioned Maryland’s handling of the ballots that were wrongly mailed to voters.
“I’m very concerned about mail-in ballots,” he said. “Mail-in ballot is, by just the nature of it, it’s going to be corrupt. So many people handle it.”
“When they were caught, they said, ‘Oh, we’ll pull them back,’ and they issued 500,000 new ballots, and, as you know, they never got the original ballots back, so there are a million ballots out there. Many of them went to Democrats, and it’s a very serious thing,” he said.
Trump added that he had directed authorities to look into the error “very strenuously.”
A Republican caucus of state lawmakers said on Saturday that the erroneous ballots could create problems in the primary and called for an audit.
“We must release the voter rolls to the federal government to allow for a thorough audit into the reported issuance of 400,000 incorrect ballots,” the Maryland Freedom Caucus said in a post on X.
The caucus also stated that voters should be able to know how their ballots will be scrutinized and emphasized the need to ensure there is no duplicate voting following the error.
The state board of elections stated on its website that election officials have put in place safeguards to ensure that only one ballot can be accepted per voter, preventing any risk of duplicate voting after the error.
“Every return envelope/oath has a unique identifier to ensure that a voter can only vote one ballot. [The Board of Elections] has implemented additional safeguards to ensure only the correct ballot is counted for each voter,” it said.
Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
