Vietnamese Voters Fault Sample Ballot

Orange County’s voting instructions may have caused confusion among Vietnamese-speaking voters in the March 5 primary because of poor English-to-Vietnamese translations in the sample ballot, according to a Vietnamese American coalition.

The translations used nontraditional idioms and were so vague that it made election documents nearly impossible to understand, said Chuyen V. Nguyen, director of the Vietnamese American Voters Coalition.

The coalition, a loosely knit group of business and community leaders, sent a letter of complaint to Registrar of Voters Rosalyn Lever last week.

Registrar officials said the problem resulted when a printer in Sacramento used the wrong computer software, making the page of instructions on how to vote by absentee ballot undecipherable.

“We caught the problem here at the registrar’s. It was a wrong computer font,” said Steve Rodermund, chief deputy registrar.

Rodermund said it was too late to order a reprint in time to distribute corrected sample ballots before the election. Instead, election workers correctly translated the page, printed it and inserted into the sample ballot, which was then mailed to about 24,400 voters who had requested a Vietnamese-language ballot.

“It included a blurb on the back to disregard the wrongly worded page,” Rodermund said.

Election officials said they did not immediately know whether the error resulted in problems for voters. Coalition members believe it did and said they hope that the error isn’t repeated for the November election.

Another complaint in the coalition’s letter involves a Vietnamese American Democrat who accidentally voted using a Republican ballot he was given at his polling place.

“It’s possible he went to a polling place and got the wrong ballot,” Rodermund said, but he added that the registrar’s office can verify only whether the voter did or did not vote at the polling place. The voter also has to assume some responsibility, he added.

Other Printing Errors Found in Voter Guides

Printing errors plagued election officials this year. In addition to the translation problem, more than 140,000 sample ballot pamphlets were printed incorrectly for the Orange County Board of Supervisors race between incumbent Cynthia P. Coad and challenger Chris Norby, a Fullerton City Council member and the eventual winner.

Coad’s and Norby’s names were reversed on the ballot, giving Norby a slight edge because his name appeared first, said Coad campaign officials. Incumbents traditionally are listed first.

A printer’s error also caused the fiscal analysis for Measure W, the initiative that changed the zoning of the closed El Toro Marine base from an airport to a large urban park, to be omitted from about 48,000 voter pamphlets mailed to South County residents.

Also, three congressional candidates in the 44th District were wrongly listed in the sample ballot.

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Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.