Maryland voters who get mail ballots can either mail them back in or leave them in ballot drop boxes.

Dominique Maria Bonessi / WAMU/DCist

If you’re a Maryland resident and still want to vote by mail, Tuesday is the last day for you to request your mail ballot. And the deadline is a strict one: your request has to be received by your local elections board by the end of the day, not just dropped in the mail. You can request a mail ballot online here.

Unlike during the state’s June primary, when every registered voter was directly sent a ballot in the mail, Maryland officials opted to make voters request a mail ballot for the November election. As of this week, more than 1.6 million Marylanders have requested a mail ballot, representing almost 40% of all registered voters in the state. Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the state’s most populous jurisdictions, account for more than 621,000 of the ballot requests to date.

So far, more than 579,000 mail ballots statewide have been returned to local election boards for counting. Voters can either mail in their ballot, or drop it off at hundreds of drop boxes located across the state.

A recent poll from Goucher College found that roughly half of Maryland voters said they would be casting their ballot by mail, though it also uncovered a distinct partisan split — 59% of those are Democrats, and only 28% are Republicans.

There’s also a deadline approaching in Virginia: if you want to request an absentee ballot in the mail, you have until Friday to do so. But Virginia voters can also cast an in-person absentee ballot by showing up to any of the early voting sites that are currently open; they’ll remain open until Oct. 31.

Early voting kicks off across Maryland on Monday, Oct. 26, and starts in D.C. on Tuesday, Oct. 27. Every registered voter in D.C. was sent a ballot directly in the mail, but election officials say that if you haven’t received yours by today you should expect to vote in person.

For all your questions on voting, check out our guides for D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Here’s a few videos on how to vote by mail, and all our elections coverage can be found here.

Filed Under: 2020 elections, absentee voting, Blue Crab Ballots, dcision 2020, early voting, elections, mail voting, Virginia Is For Voters,