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Baltimore Primary Ballots Still Being Counted, Pugh and Dixon Separated By Just a Few Thousand Votes

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — This week, thousands of provisional and absentee ballots are being tallied at the Baltimore Board of Elections, and former Mayor Sheila Dixon is eagerly awaiting to see if the count changes in her favor.

This comes the week after Catherine Pugh claimed victory in Baltimore's Democratic mayoral primary.

WJZ will be following the results closely.

The unofficial results at the end of the day Wednesday (the last day of counting) looked like this:

Catherine Pugh has about 47,371 votes and Sheila Dixon has 44,352 votes. That's a difference of 3,019.

votes

About 3,300 votes separated Catherine Pugh and Sheila Dixon on election night last Tuesday.

(As the votes are counted, the tally will be updated on the state elections website.)

The latest numbers show that Dixon gained a net 320 votes -- just about ten percent of what she needs -- but the counting goes on.

Former Mayor Sheila Dixon tells WJZ she never conceded the mayoral primary to Maryland State Senator Catherine Pugh, and that she believes as many as 15,000 absentee and provisional ballots have yet to be counted.

The stakes are so high for Dixon, she showed up at the Board of Elections headquarters Wednesday, where workers were busy in the painstaking process of counting 7,600 provisional ballots.

Dixon tells WJZ's Mike Hellgren that her team is proposing to reject almost half the ballots.

"We should not have one question on anybody's mind about buying votes, about what happened on election day -- any of the issues that affected not only my race, but also some of the council races," said Dixon.

Pugh declined to comment, but other candidates and activists rallied outside the Board of Elections, challenging irregularities in the primary.

"How many votes did we lose in the fifth district because of the incompetency and lack of training of these election judges?" asked candidate Betsy Gardner.

Pugh's lawyer says the outcome won't change.

"The election was run according to the rules. The results are clear," said Joe Sandler, Pugh campaign lawyer. "Any time the other side thinks that there is some chance a certain number of things are going to change in the process, we want to monitor what's going on."

Some allege voters were given the wrong ballots on election day, and believe votes from eight precincts that were not immediately turned in Tuesday night -- and were missing until some point on Wednesday -- may have been tampered with.

The Board of Elections says some election judges forgot to bring the voting totals to them on election night.

"If you had a job and you conducted yourself in the manner which the head of the Baltimore City Board of Elections conducted himself, you would be fired," said Rev. CD Witherspoon.

Armstead Jones, who runs elections in Baltimore, isn't worried.

"Let me just say this--I'm here to do a job, and of course, my reputation speaks for itself," said Jones.

On Wednesday, a group of concerned Baltimore City voters, calling itself "Voters Organized for the Integrity of City Elections," wrote a letter to the Office of State Prosecutor.

In the letter, they claimed "voter irregularities that have risen to the level of possible voter suppression" and asked for an independent investigation. You can read that letter in full HERE.

It was signed by Hassan Giordano, Cortly 'C.D.' Witherspoon, Doni Glover and J. Wyndal Gordon Esq., "on behalf of the voters of Baltimore City."

Catherine Pugh's lawyer tells WJZ that he believes the primary was fair and that there's no doubt she won.

Workers were not able to finish counting the provisional ballots on Wednesday. They're expected to finish by Friday afternoon.

Although whoever wins the Democratic mayoral primary will face a Republican candidate in November's general election, that nominee is poised to become Baltimore's next mayor because of the overwhelming number of registered Democrats in the city.

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