Davenport Voter’s Guide, 2026 Maryland Primary Election

Voting day is Tuesday, June 23rd. Although you can vote in person, you should vote absentee. You can tell the Board of Elections to always send you an absentee ballot, rather than ask for it each year.

Primary Voting: Maryland has closed primaries, so you must be registered to a party to vote for partisan contests. In Montgomery County, most of the real decisions are in the Democratic Primary. You may want to be non-partisan but if you are not registered for a party you will only get to vote for school board. You have been warned.

Voting Absentee: As you may know, your absentee ballot goes into a special envelope that the Board of Elections provides. As the instructions say, you must sign this envelope. The Board will receive your ballot, look your name up to make sure it’s the only ballot you’ve sent or voted, make sure it’s signed, and then they will take your ballot out and count it. Do not put your name or anything except your votes onto your ballot.

Voting Materials: In years past, you are not supposed to use your phone, but paper is allowed and encouraged. Now they are allowing phones (but older election judges may not know this new rule) as long as you don’t take pictures of your ballot or of people. I recommend a print-out.

Guides of Interest

Contests

These are all for my own personal precinct 007-022. Many ballots are different based on where you live. If you don’t want to do the research on the down-ballot contests, it’s totally fine to leave those blank. The rest of your ballot will still count. If you have an opinion, let me know and I’ll add your suggestions here. I’m skipping the unopposed contests.

Governor/Lieutenant Governor: Wes Moore and Aruna Miller. I see no reason to remove the incumbent.

Representative: Jamie Raskin. Let’s hope he becomes speaker of the house.

State Senator, District 16: Sara N. Love. She is a very capable incumbent, and although I like her opponent as well, I think an effective and experienced leader is better for getting things done.

House of Delegates, District 16, pick 3: Marc Korman, Sarah Wolek, and Tazeen Ahmad. This is the first hard choice. All three incumbents are great, and the one challenger is great. They all have loads of endorsements, have reasonable priorities, and would do good work. I currently support removing Woorman from office mostly because of her connection to Erlich.

House of Delegates, District 18, pick 3: Shetty, Solomon, Stein. My sister is in District 18 and she says, “Solomon for sure. He’s been super helpful to our community he’s also a neighbor. Same for Shetty. Stein would be new and breath of fresh air.”

House of Delegates, District 19, pick 3: Crutchfield, Stewart, Sorrel.

County Executive: Andrew Friedson. Here’s the key race. Elrich is term-limited and thus it’s an open field. Friedson, Glass, and Jawando are all appealing candidates. Ultimately, Friedson voted against the recent county budget because he believed that it kicked the can down the road. Even the council members who voted for the budget were not happy with it.

County Council At Large, pick 4: Scott Goldberg, Karla Silvestre, Laurie-Anne Sayles, and Jim McNulty. With 17 candidates, this contest is crowded and confusing. These are the four that Greater Greater Washington endorse with a thoughtful discussion of each candidate, and I liked their answers best for the League of Women Voters questionaire.

County Council District 1: Drew Morrison. All three are appealing candidates. I’ve heard from my neighbors and even reached out to the candidates with questions. Ultimately I think Morrison has the right approach to bringing in more affordable housing, and does not carry the baggage that the other two candidates have. I also met him during early voting, and he was very ethical as he strived to protect voters from aggressive election campaigners.

County Council District 5: Kristin Mink. The incumbent wants to increase taxes on the wealthy, building more housing, and fully fund the schools.

Judge of the Circuit Court Circuit 6: Marylin Pierre, only. Every election she has tried to unseat one of the four judges selected by committee. She’d be a great judge.

Register of Wills: Paul Dollahite. He’s the incumbent, and last year I worked with his office when I was an executor for a small estate of a friend. It was very well run, thorough and helpful. I wouldn’t dare remove him from office in hopes of improving an already excellent organization.

Sheriff: Will Milam. This is a heated contest (article) where the incumbent is being attacked for having a toxic workplace, and the incumbent denies it. The office is understaffed and many unions blame Yu. I find it hard to believe that they are all making it up to get their preferred candidate into office.

Democratic Central Committee At Large, pick 8: Ahmed, Belsky, Brand-Wiita, Johnson, Ramos, Riveroa-Oven, Saundry, Zwi. These are the people who often fill a position when an elected Democrat leaves office before their term is up, so they are surprisingly important. I’ve picked all the members who do not want to use special elections to fill those positions, because special elections are expensive and voter turnout is so low that they are not representative. And since that’s just a few of these 8 people, I’ve picked others that have thoughtful answers to survey questions on the League of Women Voters.

We vote for Board of Education members for all districts, regardless of which one you live in.

Board of Education At Large: Omar Lazo. Supported by the teachers union, he has a lot of experience with budgets and funding in education.

Board of Education District 3: Andrew Frykman. He’s a recent Montgomery County high-school graduate, and understands first-hand the positives and negatives of our school systems.