Last week the ICO reported that “the department of elections is one of many in the county that have shown evidence of disorganization at best and mismanagement at worst. During the 2024 presidential primary election, incorrect ballots were mailed to nearly all 52,800 registered voters, forcing the county pay thousands of dollars to have them reprinted and reissued. Another error was made two weeks before the election when about 50 people were sent incorrect ballots because of a redistricting that had not been properly loaded into the voting system.”
The main problem in Mendo is not in the departments. It’s in the CEO’s office and the Board of Supervisors. We disagree that there are “many” departments which have shown disorganization and mismanagement. Perhaps Human Resources, but that’s being run out of the CEO’s office too. The other departments are as well-run as can be expected in a small rural county. It’s unfair to dismiss them all without examples. The example provided is demonstrably wrong.
The statement about the elections department is incorrect. Mendocino County was not “forced to pay thousands of dollars to have ballots reprinted and reissued.” The vendor which made the error absorbed that cost and issued the corrected ballots without cost to the County. The redistricting error was minor and didn’t cost anything and didn’t affect any elections after it was fixed. Neither of these things are “evidence of disorganization or mismanagement.”
Apparently, we were not the only one who noticed the ICO error. According to an email exchange between the ICO reporter, Karen Elowitt and Registrar Katrina Bartolomie:
“Hi Katrina [Bartolomie, County Registrar of Voters],
Apologies for the error in the article last week, regarding who bore the cost of reprinting the ballots last year. I was the writer of that article. We will issue a correction in this week's paper. To clarify, can you tell me the name of the vendor that was responsible for the error, so that we can include that in the correction? If you are able to share the amount of money that it cost them to reprint, we can add that too.
Regards, Karen Elowitt
PS. I may do a separate (but related) article about the problems the county experienced with Integrated Voting Systems, and the errors that company made with other counties' ballots.
Bartolomie: From a year ago? Why? With the state our Country is in, elections doesn’t need any bad exposure that I think you may be dredging up. Our November election went very smoothly, as did our prior elections over the past 20 (or so) years have gone well’ we’ve not had issues like this before.
Elowitt: I know that IVS was decertified as a ballot printer last May, and I will follow up with the Secretary of State to see if the IVS appeal to be reinstated was successful or not.
Bartolomie: You might want to speak with “Rodney Rodriguez” at the Secretary of State office; he is the head of certifying and decertifying election systems and printers.
Elowitt: With this in mind, I have some additional questions for you: Has Mendocino County contracted with a new vendor for ballot printing, and if so, which one?
Bartolomie: Yes, we are using MSI out of Sacramento
Elowitt: Does a new vendor need to be approved by the County Board or any other legislative body locally?
Bartolomie: No, we chose the printer. All election ballot printers need to be certified through the Secretary of State’s office.
Elowitt: Will additional quality control measures be instituted at the county level to preclude another mix-up like the one that happened last year, or are you confident in your current process (as outlined in this press release)?
Bartolomie: This was not our error – we did our regular review process we do before every election. IVS hired a third party to set the image, ballot tint and watermark. That vendor sent the incorrect (test) file to be printed, rather than the correct ballot file. The link is a Q and A that we created to help voters with their questions.
Elowitt: Will a future printer be vetted differently than the previous one, to screen for any possible quality control issues?
Bartolomie: We did ask for extra verification on the printer side for our November ballot, but if one of their people sends the wrong ballot file, like happened to us – we wouldn’t know until they were all sent out.
Elowitt: Do you have any additional information or comments to make about the ballot printing process?
Bartolomie: When I spoke with the Chief Deputy Secretary of State when we discovered this error, she told me, a ballot issue like this this was not a common error, but it definitely wasn’t an uncommon error, this happens from time to time, it was just our turn to have a problem.
Elowitt: Thank you in advance,
Karen Elowitt
Mark Scaramella adds: We think the ICO should also apologize for mischaracterizing the organization and management of the elections office.
An important issue being overlooked here is the long history of problems with IVS: https://theava.com/archives/120173
Yet Mendo continued contracting with them…
Katrina Bartolomie is a great registrar of voters and has been doing a fantastic job. Reported errors were not of her making.
Yes, but she also made the decision to continue contracting with IVS, in spite of a lot of evidence indicating that might be unwise.
Here’s another couple articles on IVS problems (since I wrote about them in 2020):
“Company linked to ballot bungle in Sanpete County has history of errors, financial troubles”: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/10/16/company-linked-ballot/
“Fresno Supervisors Toss Ballot Printer Less Than a Month Before First Mailers Go Out”: https://gvwire.com/2023/10/10/fresno-supervisors-toss-ballot-printer-less-than-a-month-before-first-mailers-go-out/
This article, along with a quote the other day of Mo Mulheren saying she thought the upcoming state audit was due to the long-since-resolved ballot issue, makes me think this is being trotted out as some sort of red herring. Don’t look behind the curtain, Dorothy.