Maryland’s early voting turnout lags behind 2018, but unreturned mail-in ballots could make or break 2022 turnout

At the midpoint, Maryland has seen a decrease in voters taking advantage of early voting so far in 2022, but what that means for overall turnout remains up in the air with hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots yet to be cast. In the first four days of early voting, 58,715 Marylanders cast their ballots at early voting centers across the state — less than 2% of all eligible active voters. That’s almost 23,000 fewer voters than at the same point in the process in 2018, the state’s most recent gubernatorial primary. That year one-quarter of all votes were cast by early voters.