Last week, Nevada County, California, faced a printing issue with their ballots, leaving officials uncertain about the extent of the problem among the 77,000 mail-in ballots. The Nevada County elections office detected the anomaly on October 21, as reported by CBS News, and identified the source of the issue the next day.
The glitch specifically involved vote-by-mail ballots, and officials intend to rescan those that were compromised. Upon realizing that their machines were malfunctioning and not accurately reading all ballots, election officials reached out to the California Secretary of State’s office. The printing service revealed that the issue stemmed from ink overspray on specific bar codes.
“Some of our ballots, if you look really closely and use a magnifying glass, you will see that there is imperfections in the bar codes,” Nevada County Clerk Recorder Natalie Adona informed CBS. “We will use a report and say, ‘OK, which pages did not go through?’ We’ll pull those out and we’ll mark them as to be rescanned, and we will rescan them with a piece of paper where the bar code is very clear.”
Officials have stated that while the error will not affect the overall accuracy of the election, it may slow down the process. The public can observe the election proceedings either in person or via a livestream.
“We are coordinating directly with the Nevada County elections office and the secretary of state to ensure that all affected ballots can be properly reviewed and counted. While this issue is rare it can happen due to the required use of inject technology for the printing of such a large quantity of ballots,” said Runbeck Election Services, the ballot supplier, in a statement to CBS News.
Referencing a press release regarding the matter, the Nevada County Election’s Office noted, “A printer’s error on vote-by-mail ballots could delay election results from the Nov. 5, 2024 General Election due to readability issues. Luckily, the problem was immediately identified and is being addressed to ensure accuracy.”
Across the nation, election offices are facing various challenges, such as ballot boxes being vandalized and issues with noncitizen voting. Both Democratic and Republican-led states are encountering obstacles with their voter registration lists. Recently, Oregon’s Democratic Governor Tina Kotek called for an independent audit after it was found that hundreds of ineligible voters had been mistakenly registered.
