Maryland?s highest court said Monday that extending the absentee ballot deadline, as was requested by civil rights groups, wouldn?t have been worth disrupting the fall general election.
“It would be a greater evil for the courts to ignore the law itself by permitting election officials to ignore statutory requirements designed to safeguard the integrity of elections, i.e., the rights of all the voters,” Maryland Court of Appeals Chief Judge Robert Bell wrote, citing a previous opinion.
The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Baltimore County resident Melisande Fritszche, who requested an absentee ballot, but did not receive it until the night before the Nov. 7 election and could not get in her ballot in time.
The Maryland Court of Appeals rejected a motion by civil rights groups to extend the absentee ballot deadline by 24 hours because many votersdid not receive their ballots until the last minute.
The ruling means at least hundreds of Maryland voters were disenfranchised this year, according to lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers? Committee for Civil Rights, who represented Fritszche.
Delays occurred with shipping, processing and mailing ballots because voters requested more than 188,000 absentee ballots after a September primary troubled with errors, elections officials said.
