Turmoil in Mendocino: Ballot Blunders and Voter Challenges Mark the Final Day of Presidential Primary Election

Today is the last day to vote in the presidential primary election, which includes supervisors races in the first, second, and fourth districts. It also includes Measure R, renewal of the abandoned vehicle abatement program. That will result in a one dollar fee for every vehicle registered to an owner with an address in the county. There will be an additional two or maybe  three dollars for certain commercial vehicles, depending on whether the impartial analysis or the text of the ballot measure is correct. Presumably, if it passes, whatever the fee is will be renewed for another ten years.

“This is the election that keeps on giving,” as Assessor Clerk Recorder Registrar of Voters Katrina Bartolomie told the Press Democrat’s Marissa Endicott. And her office has kept on giving out ballots. Some voters have received three rounds of voting materials by now, and some will have a chance to vote twice, though they are assured that only the proper ballot will be counted.

 All registered voters in the county received Republican ballots for the first district early in February, allegedly due to a printing error by an as yet unnamed subcontractor hired by Integrated Voting Systems, a ballot service with a long history of misprinting ballots across the western United States. The vendor printed a wider variety of ballots that went out later in the month, but some of those were wrong, too. Adam Gaska, a candidate for first district supervisor, discovered that voters in some precincts had received ballots for the district they were in before the boundaries were redrawn in 2021, after the census.

George McCord of Redwood Valley is one of those voters. He received three ballots, voted one of the wrong ones, and plans to go to his polling place today to vote correctly using a fourth ballot. A week before Super Tuesday, he opened all three of the documents, “read through them as much as I could, and tried to figure out the reason why I got three,” he explained on March fourth. He chose the one he got on February 20th, which included an explanatory letter. On Saturday, he received another letter, dated February 28, telling him his ballot should have indicated that he is in the Forsythe Creek precinct. That’s the first district precinct where Gaska lives. It’s right next to Lennix precinct, which is now part of the fifth district. Gaska realized the voter rolls had not been updated one day when he was chatting with a neighbor, trying to drum up support for his candidacy.

McCord’s letter from the elections office advises him that his property “should have been moved from the 5th Supervisorial District to the 1st Supervisorial District during the recent re-districting,” which took place nearly three years ago. The letter states that the elections office did not process the incorrect ballot, and advises him to go to his polling place on election day to cast a 1st district ballot. “I just retired, so luckily for me, I’m at home,” he said. “I will definitely walk in tomorrow and vote.”

We filed a public records request on February 20, asking how many voters received ballots for the district they were in before the 2021 redistricting and the name of the third party vendor that subcontracted with Integrated Voting Systems. County Counsel assured us we would have a response by March 15. We also asked if there was a second round of GOP 1st district ballots, in an attempt to either quell or confirm one of many possible rumors that have gained currency in the widespread confusion.

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Dolly Brown, also of Redwood Valley, is one voter who did not receive a second GOP ballot. In fact, all she ever got from the elections office was the first misprint. At first, she thought she had been mistaken for her son, who is a Republican. “So I looked, and on the envelope right there it said my name, and it said Republican, and I’m like, you know what? In 55 years, I’ve never been sent a Republican ballot,” she said, laughing in astonishment. When she posted a query on Facebook, she recounted, “It was incredible. People getting one, two, three, and not getting them right.” Someone eventually sent her the press release from the county about the misprint, but, she noted, “The correction didn’t make it all the way out, because people are still not getting everything. I certainly didn’t get a replacement ballot. So yeah, it’s a mess.”

CalMatters columnist Dan Walters complains that March primaries are boring, because they don’t have voter initiatives, and “clever campaign strategists game the top-two system by trying to get the weakest would-be opponents on the November ballot.” Walters attributes low voter turnout to the ensuing boredom. 

Mendocino County’s early returns were not far behind the statewide returns as of Sunday, March third, according to the Secretary of State. 15.1% of the county’s ballots had been returned, while 13.3% of the statewide ballots had come in. Surrounding counties were ahead of Mendocino, with Lake County at 18%, Sonoma County at 19.2%, and Humboldt County at 20.2%. 

Voter turnout was not high for the previous primary election either. In the June 7, 2022 primary, only 33% of eligible Mendocino County voters and 41.5% of registered voters bothered to participate. That was slightly higher than the statewide numbers, with 33% of registered and 27% of eligible voters casting a ballot.

County elections officials are required to finalize the results thirty days from now. The Secretary of State will certify the results eight days after that.

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