Maryland election officials are mailing replacement ballots to voters after a vendor error led to some voters receiving a mail-in ballot for the wrong political party’s primary in June. However, in criticizing the mix-up, President Donald Trump distorted the facts to claim that 500,000 “fake,” “corrupt” and “illegal” ballots had been mailed to ensure “Democrats win.”
The original ballots have been “voided” and can’t be cast, state election officials said. Maryland also has a closed primary, which means Democratic and Republican voters may vote only in the party primary for which they are registered.
In response to Trump, Maryland’s top elections official posted on social media that “no fake OR illegal mail-in ballots were distributed.” Also, while more than 500,000 people requested mail-in ballots for the state’s primary election on June 23, election officials said it’s unknown how many individuals were mistakenly mailed ballots to vote in the primary of the wrong party. The vendor error affected ballots mailed to voters prior to May 14.
“While it is possible only a small number of voters received the wrong ballot, and most voters received the correct ballot, all voters must be issued a replacement ballot. This action of resending ballots maintains the integrity and security of mail-in voting,” the Maryland State Board of Elections said in a May 15 statement announcing the error made by Taylor Print & Visual Impressions Inc., the vendor that printed the state’s mail-in ballots.
But news of the ballot mistake prompted Trump to respond a few days later with an attack on voting by mail. The president has a history of making false and unsupported claims about mail-in voting, including after he lost the 2020 election. Last year, he said he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” and he has pushed for passage of a version of the Save America Act that would eliminate mail-in voting with limited exceptions.
“Maybe the worst of all is the mail-in ballots,” Trump said while talking about election integrity at a May 18 White House event on healthcare affordability. “As you know, in Maryland, 500,000 fake ballots were sent out. When they were caught, they said, ‘Oh, we’ll pull them back.’ And they issued 500,000 new ballots. And as you know, they never got the original ballots back. So, there are a million ballots out there. Many of them went to Democrats and it’s a very serious thing.” He went on to claim that “illegal” and “fraudulent” ballots had been mailed to voters.
That same day, in a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that because “many of these Ballots went to Democrats … any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance!” He then blamed it all on Wes Moore, Maryland’s Democratic governor, who is running for reelection. “He allowed this to happen in order to make sure that Democrats win,” Trump said, adding that he would ask the U.S. attorney general and the Department of Justice to investigate what happened.
Three days later, in remarks on May 21, Trump again said that Maryland “got caught with 500,000 mail-in ballots that were corrupt,” and he told the public not to believe that the error was due to a vendor “mistake.”
Trump may not believe it, but that doesn’t mean that’s not what happened.
On May 18, in another statement about the mailings, the Maryland State Board of Elections explained the situation further:
Maryland State Board of Elections, May 18: Beginning on May 9, 2026, mail-in ballots were sent out to all voters that requested them on or before May 6, 2026. While some voters may have received the correct ballot and party affiliation as they are registered, an error in the coding with SBE’s mail-in ballot vendor resulted in some voters receiving the wrong party ballot. Since the mail-in vendor was unable to accurately identify who received correct ballots and who did not receive correct ballots, SBE determined the only course of action to ensure the integrity and security of mail-in voting was sending all voters who requested a mail-in ballot by mail a new ballot.
State election officials said that only ballots that were mailed prior to May 14 were affected, and those ballots were not “fake,” nor “illegal,” according to Jared DeMarinis, the state administrator of elections in Maryland.
“It bears repeating that no fake OR illegal mail-in ballots were distributed,” DeMarinis said in a May 18 post on X. “The wording in President Trump’s continued posts about Maryland’s elections creates an environment of misinformation on a voting right. Mail-in voting is not a partisan issue. Mail-in voting is legal.”
DeMarinis also clarified in his X thread that elections in Maryland are “administered, supervised and managed” by him and the bipartisan State Board of Elections – not the governor, to whom Trump assigned blame.
State election officials said that affected voters would be notified and that they should discard or destroy the first ballot they received and vote using the replacement ballot. The new ballots will be mailed by May 29 in an envelope that says “REPLACEMENT BALLOT INSIDE,” the SBE said.
Importantly, the election officials also said that there is no risk of double voting as the original ballots that were mailed out have already been “voided” in the voter registration system. That includes any inaccurate ballots that voters already may have mailed to local elections offices before the mailing mistake was caught.
On a page answering frequently asked questions about the replacement ballots, the SBE said: “Election officials have safeguards in place to ensure that only one ballot can be accepted per voter. Every return envelope/oath has a unique identifier to ensure that a voter can only vote one ballot. SBE has implemented additional safeguards to ensure only the correct ballot is counted for each voter.”
Furthermore, because the only ballots that were affected are for the June primary election, Trump’s suggestion that “any Republican running in Maryland doesn’t have a chance” in the November general election for governor is false.
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