Bel Air Election Results 2016: Harford Supports Trump

BEL AIR, MD — Polls closed in Bel Air as the U.S. marked the end to a contentious 2016 election.

After midnight, there were 90 of 93 precincts reporting results in Harford County, with voters in the northern Maryland county throwing their support behind Republicans Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Pence in the Presidential race.

In that respect, Harford voters diverged from the state as a whole, where 59.5 percent of Maryland voters cast their ballots for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine and 34.8 percent supported the Trump-Pence ticket, according to unofficial results.

Check the Harford County Board of Elections for up-to-the-minute results.

While Rep. Chris Van Hollen won the U.S. Senate seat, the majority of Harford voters voted for his Republican challenger Kathy Szeliga; she had 76,563 votes, compared with 44,758 votes for him.

There were a total of 126,828 ballots cast in Harford County, which skewed Republican except for Congress.

• Maryland Senate Race: Chris Van Hollen Easily Defeats Kathy Szeliga

As far as ballot questions, Harford voters supported both measures, which both passed:

• One would transfer purchasing, selling or leasing property from the Department of Procurement to the Office of the Director of the Administration in Harford County. Approximately 55.6 percent voted for it, and 44.4 percent were against it in HarCo.
• The other ballot measure would change the way the governor fills a vacancy of the attorney general or the comptroller and requires a special election for vacancies occurring on/before a certain date. Statewide, Maryland voters supported that constitutional amendment, 72.5 percent to 27.5 percent, unofficial data says. In Harford County, 67.8 percent were pro Question 1 and 32.1 percent were against it.

Unusual Instruments at Polls

Bel Air voters reported mostly smooth sailing at the polls, with a few hiccups and some unusual writing instruments on Election Day.

"I had NO issues at Forest Hill Elementary School. No line either. Filled in the little ovals and I was done," Tammy Neukam-Brunetto shared on the Bel Air Patch Facebook page.

"No issues. No line," agreed Renée Pullen, who cast her ballet at Victorious Faith Fellowship.

"As an aside," she added, "I can't believe, in 2016, we vote on paper ballots with ballpoint pens that have plastic spoons taped to them."

Maryland returned to paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines for the election. Voters had to fill out their ballots with pens, then feed them into a scanner, which posed problems in at least one polling place.

"We had some issues at the [Knights of Columbus] Hall in Forest Hill — the ballot scanner kept jamming, which backed up the line and many people had to redo their ballots," Pam Hicks said on the Bel Air Patch Facebook page. "At 7:30 a.m., we should have been able to walk in and back out in less than 10 minutes."

There had been a scanner issue Tuesday morning at the Highlands School, which was fixed by 1 p.m., according to another friend of Bel Air Patch on Facebook.

During early voting, one Harford County citizen took a souvenir from the polling place. The voter pinched the pen, which had a spoon attached, called it "Spen" and put it up for sale for $5 on Craiglist.

Paper ballots: Voters used a pen to mark their selections on paper ballots, then put the ballots in a scanner for tabulation. See the end of the article for the four-step process of voting in Harford County.

Ballot questions: Harford County voters were posed with two ballot questions, one pertaining to a local charter issue and another regarding the state constitution. See sample ballots at the bottom of the article.

The Harford County issue involves a charter amendment that proposes transferring the duties of purchasing, selling or leasing property from the Department of Procurement. If the amendment were approved, these would be within the purview of the Office of the Director of the Administration. See the bill here, which was passed by the county council; it requires a vote to become law.

An amendment to the state constitution would change the way the governor fills a vacancy of the attorney general or the comptroller and requires a special election for vacancies that occur on or before a certain date. Under current law, the governor fills a vacancy by appointing someone to serve for the remainder of the term. Under the amended law, if the vacating attorney general or comptroller were members of a political party, the governor must fill the vacancy from a list of three names provided by the political party of the vacating official.

Early voting: During the early voting period (Oct. 27 to Nov. 3), more than 44,000 Harford County residents cast their ballots, according to the state board of elections. That represented 25.37 percent of eligible voters and put Harford County among the most participatory jurisdictions in the state for early voting. The only other areas with higher turnout during early voting were Howard (28.22 percent), Prince George's (26.94 percent) and Kent (25.97 percent), state election officials said in a preliminary report.

Hours: Polls were open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Polling places: Find your polling place or see a spreadsheet of Harford County polling places.

More information: See the Harford County Board of Elections and the Maryland Board of Elections websites for additional details.

Image via Shutterstock.