Printing Error Leaves Some Fairfield City Contests Off Thousands Of Ballots
FAIRFIELD (CBS13) - Voters in Fairfield may need to check for a ballot blunder. A printing error left three Fairfield city contests off thousands of mail-in ballots in five precincts.
Thousands more sample ballots had a similar issue.
"It's just too important to have mistakes like this," said Brian Thiemer.
There are four people running for two open seats on Fairfield city council. Brian Thiemer is one of them.
"It could be meaningful in results of the race," Thiemer continued.
On Friday, we told Thiemer that his name and the three others running are nowhere to be found on thousands of mail-in ballots.
"We spent the morning trying to figure out how we could mitigate the problem," said John Gardner, the Asst. Registrar of Voters.
On roughly 4,700 mail-in ballots, the race for Fairfield city council, clerk, and treasurer are missing.
On 30,000 sample ballots countywide, both the Fairfield city offices and Proposition 58 aren't there.
So how can several races be left off so many ballots?
Gardner says there was a printing error with the vendor.
"They just paired up the backsides incorrectly," said Gardner.
A person coming into the office to early vote this week noticed that Prop 58 wasn't on their sample ballot.
Gardner says his office launched an overall review and that's when they found the Fairfield mistake.
"We went through those that have voted and none of those are in the five precincts affect," said Gardner.
Early voting began Tuesday; the mistake was found Thursday afternoon.
"If it's not reflected on the ballot and people of Fairfield aren't allowed to expressed their wishes via the ballot, it's very disheartening," said Thiemer.
The county says they have measures in place to catch the bad ballots before they get submitted.
"I would like to see some failure analysis and some corrective actions so this race and also future races will not be negatively impacted," said Thiemer.
All costs to fix the problem fall on the vendor.
The corrected ballots and samples will be mailed out to those impacted beginning Monday.
