Yorba Linda : Election Mail Too Late to Help Ousted Trustee

In a snafu that the U.S. Postal Service called “a human failing,” a school board member’s campaign literature targeted for Yorba Linda voters arrived as late as a week after the Nov. 5 election.

Mary Liston, running for reelection in the Placentia Unified School District, lost by 234 votes.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Liston, who will attend her last school board meeting today.

On Friday, the Postal Service decided to refund the cost of postage “although the exact number of pieces involved is still being determined,” public affairs officer Joseph Breckenridge said.

Liston estimated that about 4,500 brochures and postcards mailed Oct. 28 and Oct. 29 arrived in Yorba Linda after the election. The post office estimates that of about 12,500 pieces of mail to different north county cities, about 2,200 arrived late in Yorba Linda. Liston said the literature, labels and postage cost her about $2,200 altogether.

“It’s a human failing that occurs in every industry in this country at one time or another. We stumble and sometimes we fall,” Postal Service District Manager Hector Godinez said.

Pointing out that 30 million to 33 million pieces of mail are delivered in Orange County each week, Godinez said: “We do a darn good job. My people are loyal and hard-working. And we made a mistake and we will pay the price.”

Liston had mailed her brochures by third-class mail, but because it was political mail, she was assured it would receive first-class priority. The post office worker who handled the mail forgot to place a red tag on the sack to signal its political nature, Godinez said.

Liston said she first realized that the literature had not reached voters in Yorba Linda two days after the election. As late as a week after the Nov. 5 race, Liston said she was still receiving phone calls from voters who said they had just received the literature.

While she could not attribute her loss directly to the mailing error, Liston said it may have contributed to her third-place showing. She received 3,063 votes while the top two vote-getters got 3,344 and 3,297.

A supervisor in the county registrar of voters’ office said it was difficult to determine how many votes each candidate received from the Yorba Linda precincts because several were consolidated with other cities, and each voter could cast up to two ballots.

Liston said the glitch was especially frustrating because she had debated whether to ask volunteers to take the literature door to door. Using the mail is “a very costly way to reach the voters, but we felt that this election was important.”

The Placentia Unified School District has 23 schools with about 17,000 students in Placentia, two-thirds of Yorba Linda and parts of Anaheim, Fullerton, Brea and some unincorporated areas, Liston said. A mother of four grown children, Liston said she has been involved with the district’s schools for more than 21 years.