Printing error affects Nevada County vote-by-mail ballots
GRASS VALLEY — Nevada County is having trouble with their mail-in ballots due to a printing error. With Election Day nearing, county officials are working around the clock to fix the problem.
Nevada County's elections office first realized something was wrong on Monday. The next day, they diagnosed the problem, and the error was specific to vote-by-mail ballots. They're not sure exactly how many of the 77,000 ballots issued were affected, but they have a plan to rescan the ones that are.
"A lot of the public is very nervous about the process, about the results," said Penn Valley resident Leilani Vevang.
The county's machines weren't properly reading all the ballots, so they called the California Secretary of State's Office. The printing service then diagnosed the issue as an ink overspray on some of the 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," said Nevada County Clerk Recorder Natalie Adona. "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."
Election officials say the printer error will not affect the accuracy, but it will slow down their operations. They will be working around the clock to certify the election results on time.
"I trust the process," said Nevada County resident Liz Streater.
For those who are more skeptical, anyone is allowed to observe the process in person or online through a live stream.
We reached out to Runbeck Election Services, which supplies the ballots. They said in a statement, in part:
"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 inkjet technology for the printing of such a large quantity of ballots."
"We care very much about getting it right. Not just because it's a presidential election but we care about every election and making sure the process is accurate that it's transparent," Adona said.
This election year, it's required that all counties must certify election results by December 3. County election officials say they are doing everything they can to make that deadline, including working weekends and late nights.