Baltimore County Election results

Early voting opened yesterday in Maryland for the 2014 primary election. Primary election voting closes on Tuesday, June 24 to determine which candidate will represent their party in the general election to be held in November. Being a mid-term election, no presidential elections (and in this case Maryland U.S. Senators) are held, but other important offices are up for election including Governor, U.S. House of Representatives, the Maryland General Assembly (state senators and delegates) as well as Baltimore County Executive and Council.

In April, I invited candidates to share their views on bicycling in and around Baltimore through an online survey. Candidates, or their staff, had until the close of Bike Month, May 31st to complete the survey. As promised, those survey results are ready. While other offices, such as Attorney General, Comptroller, Sheriff and judges are open for election, the focus was on the executive and legislative races as these offices have a greater impact on biking conditions.

Of all 216 eligible candidates, 79 took the survey. That’s a 37% response rate. While there were only 6 mandatory questions, most completed the survey of 21 questions. Only one candidate for Governor, Anthony Brown, completed the survey.

Reading the Results:

1. To offer a side by side comparison, the survey results are available as a MicroSoft Excel spreadsheet (*.xls)
2. Each office is broken out by different tabs visible at the bottom of the sheet (Governor, U.S. House of Reps, State Senate, House of Delegates, Baltimore County Executive and Baltimore County Council)
3. Across the top of each tab, the survey questions are listed in bold. A list of multiple choice answers are located on the 2nd row in italics. Where multiple choices questions offered “Select All That Apply” answers, these answers are grouped together with borders.
4. On each tab, candidates are groups by their district. Scroll down through each tabs to see the candidates who have responded. Candidates who did not participate are listed at the bottom of each tab. There are many bike friendly candidates who did not participate.
5. These survey results are for your use in helping share candidate’s views on bicycling. The survey will possibly be available for the General Election in November. This blog currently does not endorse any particular candidate or party but provides this information as a service to the biking community.