Maryland election board to keep print vendor despite multiple mistakes

Tinashe Chingarande, Baltimore Sun on Jun 12, 2026

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BALTIMORE — The Maryland State Board of Elections will continue working with printing company Taylor Print and Visual Impressions Inc. despite the vendor mailing the wrong party ballots last month and recently sending duplicate ballots.

State Election Administrator Jared DeMarinis said that because ballot-printing for the November election begins in three months, the board won’t consider another vendor. TPVI’s contract ends after the November election.

“This is not like going to Kinkos and getting paper and printing (a large) volume and also the envelopes, the inserts, the language, the materials,” he told The Baltimore Sun.

TPVI’s errors have affected hundreds of thousands of voters before they choose which candidates will advance to the general elections in November, in which all 188 seats in the Maryland General Assembly, eight congressional districts, and some local races will be decided. Candidates have also spent thousands on voter outreach, afraid that ballot errors could hurt their campaigns. State and national Republican lawmakers are also scrutinizing the elections board’s relationship with TPVI, casting doubt on the legitimacy of this year’s election results before voting even concludes.

DeMarinis said over 100 voters this week received duplicate ballots, after TPVI last month mailed over 500,000 voters replacement ballots to correct having sent voters ballots with the wrong political party and failing to identify affected voters. TPVI’s latest error, he added, was that it failed to ditch ballots flagged with quality control errors, such as smudged barcodes on envelopes.

Maryland Senate Republicans have called for an oversight hearing looking into how the elections board has handled ballot printing errors, citing voter confusion. When the Sun asked DeMarinis if the elections board is willing to cooperate, he didn’t directly answer, noting that the board has done “a good job” to ensure voters aren’t confused.

“The State Board of Elections is an open and transparent agency. Our process for counting ballots was just done at the last board meeting in front of multiple stakeholders and the public and the press,” DeMarinis said. “We have engaged in a robust voter outreach program to the potentially affected voters, with targeted messaging to ‘Vote the replacement ballots.’ We have a call center that is ready to answer any and all questions.”

House Minority Leader Jason Buckel said “there should be consequences for this major error,” adding that a new vendor should be brought on as long as general election timelines aren’t affected.

Early voting in Maryland began Thursday and will end June 18.

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