Voters cast incomplete fall ballots

He said 73 voters registered under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act filled out a ballot which did not include the school board race, requiring officials to follow up with extra material.

“This is a fluid situation and we still may receive some [Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act] ballots from voters who have used the ballot from the original email,” he said in an email. “When this occurs, we immediately contact them and send them a note with the corrected ballot.”

The source of the issue was identified earlier this month when the Daily Journal reported the county Board of Education race was left off the sample ballot, causing elections officials to postpone sending actual ballots one week from Oct. 9 to Oct. 15 while they addressed the error.

Elections officials incorrectly identified the race as a district election, resulting in only those living in District 1 along the coast receiving information about the candidates in their sample ballot. The Board of Education candidates are required to be residents of the district they represent, but members are elected by voters across the county.

Irizarry said the additional information originally intended for the sample material was included with the actual ballot in an addendum which required additional time to craft. Elections officials sent out ballots last week, and voters still received their material within the legal time requirements.

But overseas ballots are sent a couple weeks before those distributed locally, said Irizarry, leading to some of the nearly 4,000 registered as such potentially receiving ballots which were incorrect, before the issue was addressed.

In the instances when an overseas voter cast a ballot with the race omitted, Irizarry said they were sent an additional page including the school board.

“All they had to do was vote on the new card with the additional race,” he said.

Overseas voters receive an email with a secure link directing them to a website where they can print ballot material, and send it back through the mail, fax or in person.

Irizarry said it is too early to calculate the additional costs associated with attempting to fix the problem.

“We are working on determining the actual costs associated with the new mailing. The costs will need to be extracted from total election costs and that will require some time,” he said in an email.

Following the work to assure all the correct voting material was sent to voters, Irizarry said he believes all the issues have been addressed.

“We should be smooth sailing through Election Day,” he said.

But he also acknowledged the hurdles encountered raised the need for deeper evaluation of the office’s practices and policies, which he expects will take place after the current election window closes.

“We are certainly going to debrief this whole process and we will have changes,” he said.

More specifically, Irizarry said he believes the office should improve its support system to assure staff or equipment is not overburdened with work during a hectic election season.

“One of the most important things is building redundant systems, both with people and technology,” he said. “So if a system goes down or a person in unavailable, the whole system can continue to function properly.”

As an example, he said one staffer is required to oversee the more than 200 candidates who qualified for local elections — more than double the amount in the June elections.

Should that person get sick or miss work, the office faces losing a valuable resource not easily replaced, he said, building the need for establishing a backup able to step in and fill that void.

Such safeguards will protect the office in the case of encountering unexpected issues during an election, which Irizarry said are essentially inevitable. And despite the error, Irizarry said the office has recovered and is ready for handling an influx of ballots expected over the coming weeks.

“Staff has been very involved and very motivated. It’s been an exciting time here and we are taking it to a new level,” he said.

austin@smdailyjournal.com

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