County Ballot Errors Corrected; Revised Material Sent to Voters

The county registrar of voters office has corrected an error listing candidates in the wrong order on hundreds of thousands of sample and absentee ballots, as well as three more ballot errors not previously disclosed, acting Registrar Keith Boyer said Friday.

Boyer said postcards were mailed Monday to about 671,000 voters in the 74th, 77th, 78th and 79th Assembly districts who earlier had received sample and absentee ballots listing candidates for four state offices in the wrong order.

In addition, Boyer confirmed that errors have been discovered and corrected in sample and absentee ballots sent to about 56,000 voters in Escondido, Fallbrook and San Ysidro.

The Escondido error was the fault of the city, which omitted a paragraph in the wording of Proposition N, a measure dealing with qualifications and duties for the offices of city clerk and city treasurer, Boyer said. That error affected 39,086 ballots.

In a Fallbrook race, the registrar’s office misidentified a woman running for the elementary school board. The 13,608 ballots identified her as “parent” when she should have been listed as “parent/educator.”

The San Ysidro mistake also involved a school board election. With six candidates on the ballot, the instructions were to read “vote for no more than three.” But the word “no” was omitted, leaving the message to read incorrectly, “vote for more than three.”

Boyer said the cost of correcting the Escondido error will be borne by the city, but the county will have to pay for the major error and the ones in Fallbrook and San Ysidro. He said he expects the county’s costs to come to no more than $100,000.

Boyer blamed the mistakes on confusion surrounding the consolidation of hundreds of small school and special district elections formally held in odd-numbered years with the major elections held in even-numbered years.

“It’s not an excuse for making mistakes,” Boyer said. “But this election is the first of its kind for California. It’s a pilot project.”

In effect, Boyer said, the Nov. 4 vote represents a combination of the 1985 and 1986 elections, yielding about 500 separate ballots, 599 candidates for 138 offices, and 37 propositions.

Boyer said the investigation and resignation of former Registrar Ray Ortiz had nothing to do with the errors. Ortiz resigned Sept. 1 amid allegations that he showed favoritism in the awarding of contracts worth several hundred thousand dollars. No charges have been filed against him.

“No matter who would have been here as registrar, you would have had problems,” Boyer said. “Whether you would have had fewer or more, that’s up to conjecture.”