Fresno County voters who use a touchscreen ballot-marking machine at a Vote Center before or on Election Day will find a mistake printed on their ballot: the Fresno Unified School District trustee contest is labelled with the wrong district's name. The Fresno County Elections Department said on Saturday, October 31, that it had found what it called a "minor typographical printing error" on a limited number of ballots printed by the county's ballot-marking devices — and it stressed, repeatedly, that every vote is still recorded and counted in the correct race.

Source: Fresno County Elections Department

The error is narrow but confusing. On the machine's screen, voters in Fresno Unified Trustee Areas 1, 3 and 4 see the correct contest title, Fresno Unified School District. But when the device prints the paper ballot, the contest title reads "Fowler Unified School District Trustee Areas 1, 3, or 4" instead — Fowler Unified being another school district in Fresno County. A voter checking their printed ballot before handing it in could reasonably wonder whether their school board vote has gone to the wrong district's race.

County Clerk and Registrar of Voters James A. Kus has confirmed that it has not. The ballot still records the voter's choice correctly, and the vote is counted in the correct Fresno Unified trustee contest, the department said. No other contest on the ballot is affected — not the governor's race, not Congress, not any other school or city race. The mistake is in the printed label only, not in how the machine stores or tallies the selection.

What a Fresno voter can do about it

The department says it cannot change how the ballot-marking devices print at this stage of the election. Instead, signs explaining the error will be posted at all ballot-marking devices in the county's Vote Centers. Voters who live in Fresno Unified Trustee Area 1, 3 or 4 and do not want the mislabelled printout have a simple alternative: ask at any Vote Center for a ballot printed on demand instead of using the touchscreen device. Ballots printed on demand do not show the error.

Vote-by-mail voters are not affected at all. Ballots sent through the mail do not carry the error, ABC30 (KFSN) reported — the problem exists only on ballots printed by the in-person ballot-marking devices. KSEE24/CBS47 and KMPH FOX26 also reported the county's disclosure on October 31, the same day the department announced it.

Source: ABC30 (KFSN)

Extra checks after Election Day

To answer the obvious question — how will anyone be sure? — the county says it will go beyond its normal audit. After Election Day, officials will draw additional precincts in each of the three trustee areas for auditing in the Manual Tally, the hand-check of ballots the county performs after every election. For future elections, the county also plans to add another manual proofing step for ballots printed by ballot-marking devices, on top of the proofing it already does on ballots designed to be marked by hand.

"The Fresno County Clerk/Registrar of Voters apologizes for any confusion or inconvenience this typographical printing error may cause," the department said. The apology matters because of the timing: the error surfaced three days before a general election, in a county where election officials are already asking voters to trust machines that print their choices on paper.

Why it matters in Fresno

School board races are decided by neighbourhoods, and the three affected trustee areas cover large parts of the city of Fresno. Fresno is also home to one of the largest Punjabi communities in California, and many Punjabi families have children in Fresno Unified schools — for those families, the trustee contests on this ballot decide who governs their children's district. A wrong district name on the printed ballot is exactly the kind of small error that can shake confidence in a close local race, which is why the county moved to disclose it publicly on October 31 rather than fix it quietly.

What happens next

Vote Centers are open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Election Day, and 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day itself, Tuesday, November 3. The county has also added a new Vote Center at Dry Creek Elementary School, 1273 N. Armstrong Avenue, in Clovis. Mail ballots must be postmarked by November 3 and received by November 10 to count. After the election, the expanded Manual Tally audit in Areas 1, 3 and 4 will be the test of the county's assurance that the label error changed nothing — and election officials know the results in those three trustee races will be read with this disclosure in mind. Voters with questions can reach the Fresno County Elections Department at (559) 600-8683 or (844) 977-8683.