The Fresno County Elections Department has discovered a printing error affecting some ballots.
The problem appears when voters use an electronic ballot-marking device at a Vote Center. At this time, it is limited to the Fresno Unified School District trustee contest.
Voters will still be able to select their preferred candidate. However, once the machine prints the completed ballot, the contest may be incorrectly labeled as a Fowler Unified School District race.
Fresno County Registrar of Voters James A. Kus said the labeling error will not affect the way ballots are processed or counted.
Selections made in the Fresno Unified School District trustee election will be credited to the correct contest, while votes in all other races will not be impacted.
Election officials plan to post notices on ballot-marking devices at every Vote Center so voters are aware of the issue. Voters who would rather avoid the machines may request a ballot printed at the location.
Mail-in ballots and ballots printed on demand do not contain the error.
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Kus apologized for the mistake and encouraged voters with questions to contact the Fresno County Elections Department for more information.
Elsewhere in California, Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli and Attorney General Todd Blanche have been pressing the Justice Department’s effort to require election officials to set aside potentially disputed ballots from as many as 20,000 voters and confirm their citizenship before counting them.
“Every minute that goes by, American citizen votes are being diluted in the state of California,” Essayli said last week. “It’s an emergency, and we expect the courts to treat it as such.”
On Wednesday, a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s initial request to block California from processing the estimated 20,000 ballots, cautioning that such an order could “wreak havoc” on the midterm elections.
Federal law bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. The government has also said that several individuals have faced criminal charges related to alleged unlawful voter registration and voting.
As the legal dispute continued, Essayli told the California Post that he was concerned similar issues could be affecting elections in Los Angeles County.
“If you look at California’s own papers, they said they’ve already processed over 300,000 ballots just for LA County,” he said Saturday. “So this is going on as we speak.”
