Thousands of California voters got duplicate vote-by-mail ballots. Here's what happened

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Set us as preferred The Tulare County elections office in the Central Valley was suddenly getting peppered with questions from baffled voters.On the afternoon of Oct.13, residents began calling and showing up in person at the registrar of voters’ office in Visalia, worried they would be accused of committing fraud by trying to vote twice.That’s because, much to the surprise and chagrin of county elections staff, thousands of voters had accidentally been mailed duplicate ballots for the Nov.

3 midterm election.In the agricultural city of Tulare, a place surrounded by walnut and almond orchards as far as the eye can see, 7,791 voters received extra ballots because of an error by the private printing vendor, said Michelle Baldwin, the county registrar of voters, who noted that safeguards were in place to keep the extra ballots from being counted.

The county’s longtime ballot printer, Porterville-based ProVote Solutions, “has accepted full responsibility for the mistake,” she said.ProVote Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It is unfortunate that it happened,” Baldwin said.“Of course, we would have preferred this didn’t happen, but it did, and we tried to get right on it and respond within 24 hours.”It’s the kind of error that, in most election years, probably would be just a minor news story.

County elections officials would be trusted with their explanation for the mistake, said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney overseeing voting enforcement for the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.But this midterm has been beset by a growing distrust in the integrity of mail-in ballots following President Trump’s attempt to restrict them before the November election — an effort that was ...