Some voters received two ballots

The old rule “one person, one vote” is still in place, but some San Diegans have received more than one ballot in the mail.

Two people, a mother and daughter, have told the Union-Tribune that they have each received two mail-in ballots, a mistake county government said was caused by misinterpreting handwriting on their voter registration forms.

The county said voters are on rare occasion issued more than one ballot but it doesn’t know how often, that its protocols don’t catch every error, and that it depends on people using the honor system to help avoid fraud.

This glitch surfaces in an election year where the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, has said that the election is rigged against him, a claim that members from both parties and Trump’s own running mate have renounced.

The extra ballots in San Diego were issued in error and there is no indication that any sort of nefarious activity occurred in these cases. Officials are aware of both mistakes, and in one case an automatic process had canceled one of the superfluous ballots.

One problem occurred after Eva Zimmerman twice applied to register to vote. Her second application should have canceled her prior registration, but a letter in her last name was misinterpreted as “Zimmerhan” rather than the proper spelling, said county spokesman Michael Workman said. The information on the two applications was otherwise identical. She was mailed two ballots, but an automated state system caught the mistake, flagged her registration, and canceled one of her two ballots so she could not vote twice.

In the other instance, Susanne Kende, Zimmerman’s daughter, filled out two voter registration forms. She was previously an independent, but wanted to become a Democrat in order to vote for Hillary Clinton after she was told (inaccurately) that only members of the party could vote for president in the California primary.

One of her applications listed her birthday as 1954, the year she was born. The other was identical except except it appeared she was born in 1959 due to the style of her handwriting.

“My fours are like triangles and I can see how it could be taken as a nine,” she said.

But the mistake was not caught by the government and she was mailed two ballots.

“That one did not get flagged because they are a few years apart and you could conceivably have cousins that are living together who are a few years apart,” Workman said. The registrar of voters errors on the side of letting people vote rather than denying a ballot from a person who is eligible, he said.

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Kende said she told her mother about receiving two ballots, and learned that her mother was in a similar situation.

“My first original thought was ‘Oh my God, Trump is right,’ there is some kind of fraud going on. And I was hesitant because I don’t want Trump to win,” Kende said.

There have been other cases where a voter has received more than one ballot, but the county did not know how many.

“I can’t quantify, but it does happen. People call and say that it happens and we sort it out,” Workman said.

It is illegal to vote more than once, regardless of whether more than one ballot is received. The county said it refers cases of double-voting to the District Attorney’s Office, and a prosecutor there said people convicted of voting more than once could face as long as a three-year prison sentence plus additional consequences for perjury, depending on how they cheated election regulations.

The county investigates suspected cases before prosecutors get involved, Deputy District Attorney Leon Schorr said. In some instances it quickly becomes clear that a person made a mistake or there was a bureaucratic misunderstanding.

“We have investigated a lot of these types of cases,” he said, adding that he recalled a few years ago a couple cases were prosecuted.

Cases where some sort of fraud occurred typically involved an overly enthusiastic voter who has a motivation to swing an election, Leon said.

There are a handful of outcomes when voters receive two ballots. An automated state system might catch the mistake, flag the voter registration, and cancel one of the ballots.

An honest voter would complete and return one ballot and disregard the other. The county, aware of the situation because of the flagged account, will count the ballot after it verifies that they did not vote twice. If this person votes on both ballots, they would be caught and referred to the district attorney, Workman said.

It’s also possible that the state wouldn’t notice that two ballots were distributed and didn’t raise any red flags. An honest voter would destroy one ballot, and return the other where it would be counted as normal, and no indication of a mistake appears. With a dishonest double-voter, both votes could be counted. The county might later discover that two ballots were cast and the matter would be referred to prosecutors, Workman said.

Or they might not vote at all.

“We can’t make sure they are honest. We depend on them. Our goal is not to do that, but you can see how it happens,” Workman said.

There are 1.6 million registered voters in San Diego County, 63 percent of which vote by mail. There are situations that sometimes appear odd upon first inspection, Workman said. Among those are cases where twins with the same birth date, same address, and similar names might incorrectly trigger a red flag. In one instance, Workman said, a set of twins with nearly identical names lived with their father who shared a name with one of the siblings.

“It continuously tries to send them only one ballot when they’re entitled to three,” he said.

“There are things that might appear to be an inconsistency when it’s totally legit,” he later added.

And when it finds mix-ups, either in cases where people receive too many ballots or they don’t receive a ballot that they’re entitled to, the county tries to sort things out. It has already addressed Zimmerman’s situation and is in the process of sorting out Kende’s.

But even if it can’t get Kende’s registration mix-up fixed, Kende is certain there is no possible way she’d vote twice.

“I can’t find either ballot,” she said.

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1841