Printing error delays Multnomah County ballot mailing for May election

Multnomah County voters shall be getting their Might ballots a little bit later this 12 months due to a printing error.

County elections employees unintentionally printed the District 3 race for a seat on the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners on all ballots, as a substitute of simply on ballots for District 3 voters.

Elections employees grew to become conscious of the error Monday, two days earlier than ballots had been scheduled to be mailed. They should reprint all ballots, setting again their mailing date.

In an announcement, elections officers stated voters ought to get their ballots no later than Might 2, if not earlier, giving them not less than two weeks to fill of their ballots and mail them by the Might 16 deadline.

The error traces again to when employees entered poll data into the state’s voter administration system, in accordance with elections director Tim Scott. He stated when employees entered the data for that race into the system, they unintentionally marked it as countywide as a substitute of a district-specific race.

Though employees proofed ballots a number of instances earlier than printing, Scott stated they didn’t catch the error till a voter seen it on a pattern poll printed on the county’s web site.

“We should always have caught it, however we didn’t,” Scott stated. “The good information is we caught it earlier than all of the ballots had been mailed. So, we’re actually lucky that we’re in a position to get the proper ballots to greater than 560,000 voters.”

Scott stated just a few thousand army and abroad voters have already obtained their ballots with the error, however they’ll nonetheless use the ballots they obtained.

“I simply needed to guarantee these voters that if they’ve a poll that accommodates the error, they’ll flip that in,” Scott stated. “We have now a number of processes on the again finish once we obtain the ballots the place we’ll be capable of flag these ballots for hand processing.”