Baltimore election certification delayed; Jermaine Jones declares victory in District 12

Challenger Jermaine Jones has declared victory in his bid to oust Baltimore Councilman Robert Stokes with all votes now counted in an election that nonetheless remained uncertified Friday and will not be finalized until Tuesday, two weeks after Election Day.

Jones, a labor leader who received significant financial support from unions during the race, upset Stokes for the central and East Baltimore District 12 seat by 369 votes — with almost 54% of the vote. Both are Democrats.

Jones, who was a fixture at the city’s election warehouse during the counting process, said Friday he was happy to see the race come to a close.

“I feel confident declaring victory because every vote has been counted,” he said. “I had a chance to watch the entire electoral process.”

Stokes, who has remained mum on the race since Election Day, did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

While all ballots were counted, the certification of the election will not happen until Tuesday, the Baltimore City Board of Elections said late Friday. In a post on social media, the board said it requires additional time to complete legally required audits.

The Maryland State Board of Elections sets a tentative certification date for all local boards of elections on the second Friday following an election. Some jurisdictions routinely miss that deadline. There is no penalty for missing it, although lengthy delays can postpone the state board’s certification of results.

The city board of elections processed 251 ballots Friday on its final day of counting, records showed.

The outcome in District 12 was one of several noteworthy upsets across Baltimore this cycle. On Thursday, Councilman Eric Costello conceded his bid to win reelection in District 11 to challenger Zac Blanchard. The timing of the concession, delivered during a break in the City Council budget hearings Costello was chairing, came as a surprise. Just 43 votes separated Blanchard and Costello at the time. The race has been the closest since election night when returns initially showed Costello ahead by 25 votes.

In a post on social media Thursday, Costello said it had become clear that he did not have the votes to win. On Friday, the city board posted results showing a final 48-vote margin for Blanchard.

Councilman Zeke Cohen delivered the biggest upset of the 2024 primary in Baltimore. Results posted Friday showed he upset one-term incumbent Council President Nick Mosby by a 2-to-1 margin. Cohen received almost 51% of votes. Fellow challenger Shannon Sneed snared about 26%, while Mosby trailed with 23%.

Early mail-in ballot counting, allowed by law for the first time in 2024, and some unexpectedly wide margins for some candidates helped to make big city races like the contest for Baltimore mayor callable on election night. However, three races for City Council stretched on for more than a week as the majority of the city’s mail-in ballots were counted post-election.

Adding to the suspense was an error discovered in the initial Election Day results posted by the Baltimore City Board of Elections. The board overreported an extra 584 votes cast on Election Day. The discrepancy, found the next day during a routine audit, was the result of city officials failing to upload results from three ballot scanners and twice uploading results from five other precincts, the Maryland State Board of Elections announced earlier this week.

The error affected 10 precincts and significantly shifted results in the District 11 race. Initial returns showed Costello leading by 25 votes but he expanded that lead to 87 votes once the Election Day results were re-tabulated.

Initial returns on Election Day made the District 12 race also too close to call. On election night, Jones was in the lead by 211 votes but thousands of ballots remained to be counted. That lead has continued to grow.

The outcome marks an end for Stokes, who narrowly won his central and East Baltimore seat in 2016, beating out six other Democrats. In 2020, he ran on a slate with Democratic Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young in the primary, and that fall comfortably fended off a challenge from Green Party challenger Franca Muller Paz.

Before he was elected, Stokes was a longtime presence in City Hall. He was a legislative aide to then-Councilman Carl Stokes (they’re not related), worked for then-Mayor Kurt Schmoke, former City Council President Lawrence Bell and U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, among other local officials. All are Democrats.

The politically connected Jones triumphed in the race despite his late entry into the contest. He won numerous endorsements — among them were the Sierra Club, Metropolitan Baltimore AFL-CIO, and AFSCME Maryland. He reported having $34,600 on hand in his campaign account as of late April, much of it courtesy of labor union donors. He received maximum $6,000 contributions from the Construction & Master Laborers Local Union 11, Laborers District Council PAC Fund, the Metropolitan Baltimore Council for the AFL-CIO and Plumbers & Steamfitters UA Local 486.

Jones previously ran for the City Council in District 3 in 2016, placing second behind Ryan Dorsey who won the northeast Baltimore seat for the first time that year.