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Md. Code, Election Law § 16-304

This is the official text of Md. Code, Election Law § 16-304, part of Maryland’s Code, Election Law — governs how elections are conducted.

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§16–304.

Official statutory text

(a) In a polling place on election day, an election judge may not willfully and knowingly:

(1) permit a ballot or ballots to be placed into a ballot receptacle prior to the time for voting; or

(2) place a ballot in a ballot receptacle unless the ballot is offered by a properly registered voter or is a provisional ballot placed with other provisional ballots of the same character.

(b) A person may not:

(1) cause or permit a ballot, including a provisional ballot, to be cast or deposited in a ballot receptacle, voting device, or other receptacle designed for the collection of ballots other than by a person entitled under this article to cast a ballot; or

(2) substitute, alter, add, or remove a submitted ballot from a ballot receptacle, voting device, or other receptacle designed for the collection of ballots, except when instructed to do so by the election director.

(c) A person who violates this section is guilty of a felony and is subject to imprisonment for not less than 1 year nor more than 5 years.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.