Voters Receive Wrong Ballots

An election department snafu has resulted in the wrong ballots being sent to a handful of absentee voters in Camarillo, raising concerns about the potential for problems in the March 5 primary.

Ventura County elections chief Bruce Bradley said human error is to blame for some Camarillo residents--only about 10 have come forward so far--receiving absentee ballots intended for voters in Simi Valley.

Bradley said the problem likely occurred when an election worker reached for the wrong pile while helping insert more than 40,000 absentee ballots into envelopes mailed out earlier this month.

There is no way to know how many misdirected ballots went out, Bradley said. But he said he suspects they went to no more than 50 of the 7,600 voters in the Camarillo area who requested absentee ballots.

“It certainly is not widespread,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to affect any races.”

But Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) worries otherwise.

He said his office has been contacted by several people in the Camarillo area who unexpectedly found themselves able to vote in the 4th District supervisorial race in which incumbent Judy Mikels is facing challenger John Lane. Camarillo residents are in the 3rd District, where there is no supervisorial race this year.

Gallegly worries that the ballot error could result in some ballots being disqualified or counted in the wrong election.

“Some of these races could be very tight, and if we learned anything in the last presidential cycle, it is that elections should be taken more seriously than like they might have been in Florida and other places,” he said.

Bradley said any voter who receives the wrong ballot can contact the election division and get the correct one. Residents have until Tuesday to request an absentee ballot by mail.

Moreover, Bradley said even if an absentee voter received the wrong ballot and erroneously cast a vote in the race for 4th District supervisor, the department’s computers would catch the error and disqualify that vote.

The rest of the ballot, however, would stand.

*

Times staff writer Daryl Kelley contributed to this story.