At the end of a cluttered path, past the hundreds of poll books plugged into an electrical system that’s a code violation, sit the ballots. The sheets, thousands stacked haphazardly on a wood pallet, are the last vestige of the 2024 primary election.

The canted pile, cloaked in near darkness, fulfills the Baltimore City Board of Elections’ requirement to store materials for almost two years after an election — or until all legal disputes have been settled.

Feet away, chunks of concrete mingle with blue boxes marked “do not tamper.” The clods and fine dust were once part of the 1930s-era building’s roof, which has, for years, been crumbling inward. Rainwater is also a frequent invader.

This is the condition of the Baltimore City Board of Elections’ warehouse, home for the equipment, ballots and staff needed to run city elections for the last 100 years.

The state of the building is little secret. Elected officials and their representatives descend on the facility twice every two years to observe as staff members process and count thousands of ballots, a production that has extended for sometimes weeks with the shift to mail voting. The building’s dump truck-sized air handler must be halted so vote tallies aren’t drowned out by its clatter.

Still, replacing the patently outdated warehouse has been slow.

Armstead Jones, Baltimore’s election director of two decades, pledged to oversee a move from the facility before his retirement. Instead, he died this year within hours of announcing that departure, leaving plans for the warehouse’s replacement still incomplete.

Fresh blood in the election director role has brought fresh promises for a newer, safer facility. Although money for a warehouse replacement was wiped from Baltimore’s budget this year, Clifford Tatum, who assumed the director post in September, said city officials have assured him that it will be available next cycle. A new location on Caton Avenue has been scouted. It would be leased, not owned.

But thanks to the impending 2026 election, the Board of Elections will have to do something it’s well accustomed to doing: wait. A move won’t be possible until early 2027, officials said.

“Something’s happening,” Tatum said. “I don’t have detail I can give right now, but they’re moving this in the right direction.”

New promises of a move have been hastened by outside interventions. Maryland Occupational Safety and Health inspected the warehouse in July, citing the city-owned property with 19 violations, two of which were deemed “serious.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which has oversight of election security, also inspected the facility this year, although the results of that visit have been kept under wraps. The Banner’s request for the inspection report, which also analyzed the board’s downtown office, was denied by the election board’s attorney, who cited security concerns. The Department of General Services, which is responsible for the maintenance of both facilities, claimed to not have a copy.

Jared DeMarinis, Maryland’s election administrator, said both inspection reports signaled that it’s no longer a matter of it being nice to have a new warehouse. It’s a necessity.

“This is not a sustainable outcome,” he said. “It has shifted, for me ... to a must have.”

DeMarinis said Homeland Security found improvements that could be made in Baltimore, but he maintained that the facility is fundamentally secure.

“It highlights where Baltimore City is compared to current standards,” he said. “While it’s still safe and secure for voting equipment, we shouldn’t be at that level. It should be at a higher level.”

The violations found by Maryland Occupational Safety and Health centered on electrical issues. A dated breaker box remains the only way to turn on the building’s lights, one of two serious violations. Inspectors also found live electrical fixtures in areas where employees could potentially have contact with them, also a serious violation.

Workplace safety inspectors flagged unmarked emergency exits and numerous other electrical issues, like power strips daisy-chained together to charge hundreds of poll books and other equipment.

Staffer Glen Muir said roughly 3,000 pieces of equipment are stored in the warehouse, some owned by the city, some leased. The poll books, about 20 years old with flagging batteries, have to be charged bimonthly, even when they’re not being used. Workplace safety inspectors found that the yards and yards of power strips used for charging were being overloaded. Breakers routinely trip during charging, Muir said.

Muir said inspectors found live wires over the desks in the warehouse’s small office space and said the outlets in the room were not enough to accommodate the computers and printers relying on them. The election board uploads USB drives containing vote totals from that office.

“They wanted us to disable it,” Muir said. “It’s like ‘How do you work?’”

The Department of General Services has done some work in response, Muir said, but often the fixes are temporary patches.

When the board members count ballots, they sit beneath a light fixture scorched by a fire. Rather than replace the light, city crews simply removed its bulbs and disconnected it from the rest of the aging system.

John Riggin, a spokesman for General Services, said the department’s facilities team worked on the site, including updating fire extinguishers and installing temporary safety signs. Permanent signage will be installed before the end of the year, he said. The department has a vendor lined up to do required electrical work, but funding must be allocated before that can begin, Riggin said.

A lease for the new Caton Avenue space is expected to be signed in 2026, Tatum said. After that, infrastructure like office space would have be built out.

Until then, officials are trying to patch issues that could be health hazards for the six staff members who work full time at the warehouse. That number will expand upwards to 75-100 during ballot counting.

“We’re keeping an eye on the environmental piece, things that would affect the staff,” Tatum said. “Other than that, we’re just sort of biding time.”