The Board of Elections for Anne Arundel County has sent the Anne Arundel County United Slate a cease and desist letter after the slate sent out nearly 10,000 mailers suggesting that they were official ballots from the Board of Elections in the upcoming election.
The slate is chaired by former Delegate MaryAnn Love of Glen Burnie and former Delegate Virginia Clagett of West River. The mailer had the return address of joint campaign headquarters of Speaker of the House of Delegates Mike Busch, Candidate for State Senate Sarah Elfreth, Candidate for House of Delegates Alice Cain, and County Executive Candidate Steuart Pittman. The members of the slate include most of the Democratic candidates currently running for office. As of August 28, 2018 the slate reported $74,001.64 of cash on hand.
In a statement released by the Republican State Central Committee of Anne Arundel County, Chairman Wayne Smith said:
It is disconcerting that these candidates including the candidate for County Executive who has made transparency part of his platform, would align themselves with individuals and an organization that has set out to deliberately cheat and disenfranchise voters. Dirty Chicago politics have no place in Anne Arundel County. We will be forwarding this to the State Prosecutor and Attorney General for a full investigation into this odious act. As part of this slate, each of these candidates is responsible for the content and needs to answer to the public for the mailer. The Board of Elections has worked tirelessly to build confidence in Maryland’s electoral process, and it is despicable that former Delegates and a candidate for County Executive would purposefully collude to mislead voters.
A copy of the mailer is below. Note that aside from the authority line on the address panel, the mailer indicates that it is coming from the Board of Elections as it included the correct BOE website and phone number and used the pronoun “us”.
