Democrat Frank Kratovil more than doubled his lead over Republican Andy Harris in the tight race for the 1st Congressional District after eight of its 12 counties reported their absentee ballot counts late Thursday.
Kratovil, the Queen Anne’s state’s attorney, is now 1,871 votes ahead of Harris, a Baltimore County state senator. Kratovil has 167,101 votes (49 percent) and Harris has 165,230 (48.5 percent), while Libertarian Richard Davis maintained his 2.4 percent share with 8,259 votes.
Harris continued to do well in his home turf of Baltimore County, but had virtually no net gain –18 votes — in Anne Arundel County, which he also won but where his share of the total vote actually declined from 54 percent to 51 percent.
This leaves only Harford County absentees to boost Harris’ numbers. The count there was delayed after Democratic observers objected to the handling of the ballots. Only three other counties have yet to report their votes: Cecil, Talbot and Worcester counties, all carried by Kratovil in Tuesday’s tallies.
Neither candidate has claimed victory or conceded defeat. A much smaller number of provisional ballots and those from overseas will not be counted until next week.
For a complete run-down of the current vote tally in the 1st District, go to the state Board of Elections Web site:
http://www.elections.state.md.us/elections/2008/results/general/office_Representative_in_Congress.html
