{"id":13012,"date":"2020-06-03T09:22:26","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T13:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=13012"},"modified":"2020-06-03T09:22:31","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T13:22:31","slug":"baltimore-citys-election-has-a-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=13012","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore City\u2019s Election Has a Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baltimore City Council Member Zeke Cohen was riding high. A first term incumbent in District 1 (Southeast Baltimore\/Canton\/Fells Point), Cohen was running for reelection and was endorsed by most of the major progressive institutional players in city politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cohen\u2019s challenger, Paris Bienert, was a credible candidate but her endorsement list was no match for the incumbent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For the cycle, Cohen outraised Bienert by $322,837 vs $170,795 through May 17, a nearly 2-1 edge. Cohen also outspent Bienert by $194,015 vs $124,069. Cohen was so confident of victory that he reported a cash balance of $206,174 on May 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this looks like a big win for the incumbent, yeah?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last night, Cohen tweeted the following after seeing early results showing Bienert getting 98% of the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cohen called out the county board of elections and the results came down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Another person caught this aberrant result. (I redacted the person\u2019s identity from the tweet.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Even Bienert didn\u2019t believe it. She told the Baltimore Sun<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m very excited by these numbers, but I do think there\u2019s been a misreporting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this will remind folks of the botched city election of four years ago, when activists alleged<\/a> \u201cirregularities, including late-opening polling stations; alleged conflicts of interest among campaign staffers who worked as election judges; polling-machine memory sticks that were missing for about 24 hours; and problems with resources, including shortages of ballots and ballpoint pens at some centers.\u201d Future federal convict Catherine Pugh wound up winning the race for Mayor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am hearing that the State Board of Elections will address the matter today. For now, this tweet on Cohen\u2019s thread says it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Adam Pagnucco. Baltimore City Council Member Zeke Cohen was riding high. A first term incumbent in District 1 (Southeast Baltimore\/Canton\/Fells Point), Cohen was running for reelection and was endorsed by most of the major progressive institutional players in city politics. Cohen\u2019s challenger, Paris Bienert, was a credible candidate but her endorsement list was no … Continue reading Baltimore City\u2019s Election Has a Problem<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,414],"tags":[1545,1617,769,2358],"class_list":["post-13012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-baltimore-city","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-baltimore-city","tag-maryland-state-board-of-elections","tag-zeke-cohen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-3nS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13021,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13012\/revisions\/13021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}