Board of Elections Shenanigans Documented

The Republican Board of Elections Chair is moving to restore one of the early-voting sites closed in a partisan vote after Republicans on the Board consulted secretly with party leaders and among themselves in closed meetings. Instead of opening a new early voting center in Brookville, he will propose at a special meeting to keep open the Praisner Center, which has a high share of African-American and Latino voters. From the Washington Post:

Bowing to three weeks of pressure from Democrats, the head of Montgomery County’s Board of Elections said Monday that he will propose that the Republican-majority panel retain one of the two heavily used early-voting sites it had voted last month to move. . .

Shalleck has scheduled a special board meeting for 5 p.m. Wednesday at the county elections offices in Gaithersburg to recommend that the Marilyn J. Praisner Community Recreation Center in Burtonsville continue as an early-voting spot.

But he still wants to close the Lawton Center site in order to open one in Potomac in the name of “geographic diversity” so the Democrats aren’t buying. The Lawton Center is in one of the more densely populated areas of the County and also within walking distance of the County’s largest employment center in Bethesda.