Riverside County officials are reminding registered voters to cast their ballot only once for the Nov. 8 general election after duplicate mail-in-ballots were sent out.
The Riverside County Registrar of Voters announced that about 5,000 duplicate ballots were erroneously mailed to some residents in western Riverside County, including absentee voters in Canyon Lake, Menifee, Murrieta, Wildomar and Winchester.
Officials blame a computer system error for the mistake. They say while the issue was identified last weekend, ballot packets had already been delivered to the U.S. Postal Service. The registrar confirms the problem has been fixed, and new procedures are established to prevent the error in the future.
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But as election fraud claims from 2018 continue to divide communities, Riverside County officials appear to assure that only one ballot from each voter will be counted.
“It’s important to note that none of the duplicate ballots will result in a voter being able to cast more than one ballot,” Registrar of Voters Rebecca Spencer said in a new release. “I take election integrity seriously and apologize for the inconvenience.”
Each vote-by-mail envelop has a bar code. When the bar code is scanned as accepted, it automatically locks the voter’s record to prevent the person from voting more than once. The first ballot would be processed while the second one would be automatically voided.
Riverside County officials recommend that those who receive duplicate ballots return one of the ballots to the Registrar of Voters office.
“It does not matter which ballot the voter returns as both ballots are the same,” the new release noted.
Voters with questions or concerns regarding the ballot are asked to call the Riverside County Registrar of Voters at (951) 486-7200.
