Maryland elections board nominee questioned after predecessor charged in Capitol riot

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Maryland lawmakers questioned a Republican nominee to the state elections board on Monday, particularly asking her whereabouts on Jan. 6, 2021, after a earlier board member resigned when charged with taking part in the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

In questioning Diane Butler at a state Senate listening to, the panel of lawmakers managed by Democrats was following up on a pledge to be extra cautious in its affirmation course of because it weighs the substitute for the previous Republican elections board official, who resigned in January.

“I’d just gotten back from Florida visiting with my daughter, and I was actually cleaning my fish tank because it got a bunch of stuff in it while I was gone,” Butler mentioned, when requested the place she was on Jan. 6, 2021. “I was at home.”

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Members of Maryland Senate’s Executive Nominations Committee have mentioned they are going to be extra diligent after failing to ask a single query of Carlos Ayala, who resigned his place on the elections board in January after being charged in federal courtroom. He faces prices of civil dysfunction, a felony, and a number of misdemeanor counts for allegedly taking part in the riot whereas Congress was certifying the 2020 presidential election outcomes.

Sen. Clarence Lam, a Democrat, additionally requested Butler a few screenshot of a Facebook web page he mentioned his workplace obtained that seemed to be from her regarding pandemic masking steering from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The post that was purported to be from you said that you have responded with a comment of: ’What’s next? Nazi armbands?’ Is that something you recall posting in the past?” Lam requested.

Diane Butler, who was nominated to serve on the Maryland State Board of Elections

Diane Butler, who’s nominated to serve on the Maryland State Board of Elections, stands in entrance of the Maryland Senate Executive Nominations Committee on March 11, 2024, in Annapolis, Md. (AP Photo/Brian Witte)

When Butler responded “no, I don’t recall that,” Lam requested once more.

“It could have been mine. I think that there were a lot of different thoughts about the masks, and I think people had a lot of thoughts in the beginning,” Butler mentioned.

Butler, who served as a county elections official in the state, confronted quite a lot of questions on her beliefs in the integrity of the state elections course of.

Butler appeared earlier than a state Senate panel that votes on nominees by the governor to positions in state authorities, together with the Maryland State Board of Elections, which is comprised of 5 members.

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The minority get together, which in Maryland is the Republican Party, nominates two members to the state’s governor, who forwards the nomination to the state Senate for consideration.

Lam additionally requested Butler if she thought fraud “is a major drawback in Maryland’s elections,” and she or he mentioned “no.” Butler additionally mentioned she didn’t imagine there was unlawful interference in previous elections in the state.

Asked for her ideas about mail-in ballots, Butler mentioned she believed “it can be done extremely well,” and she or he thought Maryland did “a good job with it under the circumstances we had” in the course of the pandemic.

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