The League of Women Voters of Maryland (LWVMD) provided candidate information to more than a quarter million Marylanders in advance of the June 26 primary election. This included 188,000 copies of the Voter’s Guideprinted by local Leagues, over 10,000 views of those Guides on the LWVMD website, and more than 53,000 users of the interactive online version of the guide at Vote411.org. This represents more than 30% of the votes cast for all candidates for Governor.
LWVMD Co-President Richard Willson said “We are very proud of the service that we provided to Maryland voters. Both candidates and voters rely on the League to present unbiased information, letting the candidates speak in their own voices without endorsement or commentary from the League.” LWVMD Co-President Elaine Apter added “We owe our success to the many League volunteers throughout Maryland who prepared descriptions of offices, questions for candidates, and exported the candidates’ responses to prepare print versions of the Voter’s Guide.”
“Only about half of local Leagues are able to publish large numbers of their Voter’s Guide for the public,” according to Ralph Watkins, LWVMD Vice President for Voter Service. “The Vote411.org website made it possible to serve the 8 counties that do not have a local League as well as voters in the counties where few copies of the Voter’s Guide were available to voters. We also posted on our state website pdf copies of the Voter’s Guide for each county for those voters who wanted to print their own.”
The Voter’s Guide and Vote411.org will be updated for the general election. That edition will include the nominees of major and minor parties, candidates nominated by petition, appellate judgeships and ballot questions. To receive an alert when Vote411.org goes live for the general election, or to get a print guide voters can sign up here: https://www.lwvmd.org/voter_s_guide_sign_up
