Montgomery County Votes at Its Assigned Polling Places Today — With 58,546 Mail Ballots Still Out

Montgomery County's Election Day is an assigned-place election. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, anyone in line by 8 p.m. can vote, and on Election Day a voter must go to the polling place assigned to their precinct — which may not be where they voted early. A voter who needs to register, or update an address, can do it at that polling place today.

The mail story is the county's unfinished business. As of October 31, Montgomery County had sent 141,514 mail-in ballots and received 82,968 back, according to State Board of Elections data — leaving 58,546 still out on the morning of the election. A mail ballot can still be put in one of the county's 58 official drop boxes by 8 p.m. tonight, or handed in at the county elections office by then.

The ballot carries federal, state and county offices plus three statewide questions — constitutional amendments — and, for this county, no county ballot questions of its own. Takoma Park and Poolesville also hold their town elections today, at separate polling places on the same 7-to-8 hours, so residents voting in both elections vote in two places. Montgomery County Public Schools, which had no classes Monday, keeps its schools and offices closed today for Election Day.

The count will be a slow reveal. Results start after polls close tonight — mail ballots counted before Election Day are held until all polls close — and then Montgomery's board stops: it does not count on Election Day itself after the first release, and its canvass resumes Thursday, November 5, continuing on a published schedule of sessions through November 18, each livestreamed. The state's own administrator is making the rounds today: Jared DeMarinis opens his Election Day media tour at Burtonsville Elementary School in Montgomery County at 10 a.m., before stops at three Prince George's County schools and one in Anne Arundel County.