Mendocino County voters subjected to a second ballot error, this one possibly a couple years old but never noticed
MENDOCINO Co., 2/23/24 — An error by the Mendocino County elections department has left nearly 200 Mendocino County voters needing to throw away their ballots for the second time this month. Many more have been left confused and concerned about how to vote or whether their vote will count.
A vendor error in early February resulted in a request by the county for voters to discard all of their ballots and await the mail for new ballots. Then, the second round of ballots was sent to every voter in the county. It turns out that some of those ballots have a different problem — the voter database had not been updated after the 2021 redistricting process drew new boundaries for supervisorial districts. Voters received ballots for a supervisorial district they no longer live in.
On Friday at noon, Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Katrina Bartolomie said the number of people who got wrong ballots was 177, far lower than what had been feared. Even a Friday morning press release from the county gave the number at 300 or less. But close study showed that homes that seemed to be on the boundary of the redistricted areas were actually not. Some large parcels crossed districts, and Bartolomie explained that houses were mapped to determine which district they were in. Adjusting districts is done after each ten-year census to try to even out the number of voters in each district. About 140 of the incorrect ballots were mailed to the Hopland area, Bartolomie said.
Most voters’ second ballots are correct. However, if you live near the edges of your supervisorial district, the county encourages you to look at an updated parcel map the county posted on the assessor’s site.
Anyone can go and see if they may have been moved to another district following the 2020 census: check the link here.
“We need to do this as quickly as we can. We are running out of time,” Mendocino County CEO Darcie Antle said.
The county plan is to identify and mail new ballots to every one of the 177 addresses. They will also send a letter and email where possible.
“Some people might open a letter who might not look at the new ballot,” Bartolomie explained.
Antle couldn’t confirm whether people who were slotted into new supervisorial districts were ever contacted directly when the redistricting was done in 2021. Still, the redistricting process was open and public and involved many members of each community involved. A remaining question is whether the redistricting was ever completed. Were the errors the fault of county elections or were some people never moved to a new district in county files? This is what the county is investigating, a problem with how census blocks may have been incorrectly implemented. That effort will be the subject of a future story, when the investigation is complete.
Everyone who received a wrong ballot will be provided a third ballot. People wondering if their ballot is valid can call the county elections office at 707-234-6819.
California’s Deputy Secretary of State for Communications, Joe Kocurek, said he could only say that the state has asked Mendocino County to come up with a plan to fix the second round of problems.He said no other county in California is currently having these problems and that such events are very rare. “That’s really all I can say at this point,” Kocurek said.
This newest mess comes just weeks after another major error in which every Mendocino County voter received a District 1 ballot for the Republican presidential primary, regardless of party affiliation or which district they live in.
Antle said that Leif Farr, the county’s Geographic Information Systems coordinator and census expert, has been taken off his regular duties to work full-time on trying to understand the cascade of errors, both in and out of county, that caused the debacle. Antle said the state has determined that the county did the right thing when the first ballot error occurred (see more here).
As that error impacted every person’s ballot, there was possible state and federal involvement. The second error is confined to a local issue, so the state and federal governments are not a concern.
A confounding error that may reach into past elections
The redistricting mixup went unnoticed through multiple election cycles, including two contested supervisorial races in 2022.
A few people likely voted in districts where they did not reside, especially in the race won by Supervisor John Haschak. The problem was not identified until now, and from everything seen so far, not known. Until Adam Gaska, a candidate for supervisor in District 1, spotted it and brought attention to the problem, the discrepancy had gone unnoticed.
“It’s very concerning that the redistricting done in 2021 was not completed accurately,” said Carrie Shattuck, one of Gaska’s opponents in the District 1 race. “Sending yet another round of ballots to voters in these precinct boundary areas will only complicate the voting further, although it needs to be done. Voters receiving three ballots in the same election, in my opinion, further erodes the public’s trust in our voting system.”
Neither Bartolomie or Antle could give a final answer on where the redistricting error was made. Lengthy discussions revealed the district maps don’t exactly match the files used by the elections office. Antle said Friday morning that a file with all the correct information should have been sent to elections, then implemented there. There was an update, but apparently it was incomplete. A new method of using census blocks is blamed, but it’s unclear where the mistake was made and by whom.
Bartolomie replaced the vendor that produces and mails the ballots between the 2022 and 2023 elections, but that does not seem to have played any role in the second round of problems. In an earlier interview, Bartolomie said she had gone back to their original vendor, IVS, because of problems working with the replacement vendor, Runbeck Election Services. Antle said it was Bartolomie’s responsibility to choose a vendor. What is most certain is that the 2022 supervisor elections were decided by a large enough margin that votes from voters in wrong districts would not have made a difference.
Supervisor Ted Williams got more than 80 percent of the vote in his campaign, and Supervisor John Haschak got more than 70 percent in the June 2022 primary.
But the story may be much different this primary election, with three contested supervisorial races underway. The candidates for Mendocino County District 1 Supervisor are Madeleine Cline, Carrie Shattuck, Adam Gaska, and Trevor Mockel; for District 2 the candidates are incumbent Mo Mulheren and challenger Jacob Brown; for District 4 the candidates are Fort Bragg Mayor Bernie Norvell and Georgina Avila-Gorman.
To add another wrinkle to the bizarre story, it was District 1 candidate Adam Gaska who discovered the error and tracked down a list of hundreds of voters who were sent wrong ballots in his district and in adjacent District 5, where Supervisor Ted Williams does not face reelection this year, but has mounted a campaign for the California Assembly seat being vacated by Jim Wood.
Gaska attributes his spotting the discrepancy to being a “numbers guy” who spent hours comparing lists and addresses to the new maps. He said it also helped that he lives right on the district boundary. “I live in the 1st District, but when I look across the street, that’s the 5th District.”
When Gaska saw a post from Facebook on Monday from a woman saying she got the wrong ballot, he realized she was a neighbor and called her to find out more. Gaska went to his computer and opened up the file of all the voters in the county. He had the redistricting maps and the addresses of every registered voter in the county. He compared the two, using voters’ addresses.
Gaska quickly found 50 voters who he knew were in the wrong district. He called Supervisor Williams, who had been looking into other reports of election mistakes. Williams contacted Bartolomie, whose office investigated and put out a press release on Wednesday. By the end of Wednesday Gaska had found hundreds more errors and was making regular reports to the county each time he found people in the wrong district. Bartolomie confirmed that the county, not a vendor, was responsible for the second round of errors. She said Gaska had reported the error and had provided additional names of people who likely got a ballot for a different district than the one they live in. But not all those names ended up having gotten bad ballots.
Gaska said Thursday afternoon he had reported about 500 voters in the 1st and 5th districts.
Bartolomie said after making the initial discovery and presenting the first batch of names, Gaska tried to help by providing more names. However, the county has more resources and amassed a large group of people who worked together using multiple maps.
“He decided that he was going to help us and look at the redistricting maps that he had. We have three different GIS maps that we use. We were reviewing all of them plus the county map on the website to make sure what we were doing last night resulted in us getting this correct and coming up with the correct number [of incorrect district ballots],” she said.
This mistake came when the county sent files with the names of voters to its Central California printing and mailing election vendor, Integrated Voting Systems. IVS printed what the county sent and then mailed the ballots. But the county had sent lists that had not been updated with the new districting information, resulting in people getting ballots for the wrong supervisorial district.
All that time, the files being sent were wrong but no one noticed. Redistricting happens every ten years after the decennial U.S Census. It moves voters around to account for population shifts. That process is explained here: Final redistricting map approved by Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
There were errors in the database from 2022-2024. For those elections, the practical effect was little even though some people likely voted in the wrong supervisor election.
But with the election just three weeks away, Gaska questions how the problem can be fixed. He said a lot of voters may miss out on picking their next supervisor.
“People are being disenfranchised one way or another,” Gaska said. “There are some who got their ballot and voted, and that ballot will end up being voided. Some won’t vote because they are confused. Some didn’t get their correct ballot because they already voted and may be out of town. I have talked to several people like that already.”
Several people have contacted The Mendocino Voice to report they have two ballots on their desk and thought there was a new problem. They didn’t hear about the mistake and now are bemused at the whole business.
With four candidates in the District 1 race, Gaska says a runoff is likely.
Even if one of the four was to win outright, the second place finisher in a close race could raise the ballot mishaps as a serious issue.
“With this many people being disenfranchised, if the margin between who is going to go to a runoff in November is only 100 votes, that’s enough of a margin of error that someone could contest the election,” Gaska said.
A runoff happens when nobody gets more than 50 percent of the vote. In the other two supervisorial races, each with two candidates, someone will win. If either of those races are close there will be time to sort out any issues, if a method of doing so is revealed in the remaining days before the vote. But in the 1st District, a second election campaign will be underway immediately if none of the four reaches 50 percent, Gaska pointed out.
Solutions suggested on social media included a state takeover of the process, state monitors or some sort of revote. Gaska hopes the state will propose something that can help and hasn’t decided yet what solution to endorse. Kocurek said he couldn’t comment on the options at this point but said there were statutory restrictions on changing election dates.
The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to getting people to participate in the democratic process, and they are saying people should vote.
“We are certainly in uncharted territory,” said Charlene McAllister, president of the League of Women Voters of Mendocino County.
“The League of Women Voters recommends that you vote the ballot you received unless you are in that part of the county where the district boundaries have been changed.”
Those people who were affected need to contact the Registrar of Voters and get directions, she added.
“At this time, it is a wait and see what the state recommends. In the meantime, the majority of voters can use the ballots they were sent,” McAllister said.
In fairness to Gaska’s three opponents, the Mendocino Voice reached out to give them a chance to participate in a story that their opponent helped create. Gaska was reached by email and two of the other three candidates also responded that way.
Madeline Cline wrote that these ballot issues are not an isolated problem. “We need a change in the leadership tone at the top of the organization. I intend to ask questions about competency in basic operations throughout the county. It’s time to get back to the basics and get the County of Mendocino back on track.”
Trevor Mockel issued the following statement: “I’ve formally requested clarification from the Secretary of State on best practices to rectify recent mistakes and fortify future elections. Furthermore, I’ve initiated discussions with Assembly and Senate staff to foster collaborative solutions, aiming to safeguard electoral integrity. We must implement comprehensive measures that promote transparency and fairness in our electoral process.”
While these election mishaps have been the subject of vitriol and confusion online, few of the sources contacted understood the problem well enough to comment.
Shattuck pointed out that on the Board of Supervisors meeting Agenda for February 27, there is a Closed Session item 6f “Pursuant to Government Code Section 54956.9(d)(2) – Conference with Legal Counsel-Anticipated Litigation: Significant Exposure to Litigation Arising from Mailing of Incorrect Ballots for March 5, 2024, Presidential Primary Election: One Case.
“I am filing a complaint with the Secretary of State and asking for their intervention. I think we should have another separate Supervisor election as all of the three districts (1st, 2nd and 4th) that have Supervisor elections have been disenfranchised,” said Shattuck.
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