Sample ballot glitch in Washoe County

RENO, Nev. (KOLO) - Most of us take a sample ballot for granted when it arrives in the mail. Besides listing the candidates, there’s also information about voting locations, times, and new laws concerning vote-by-mail.

Lemmon Valley resident Tammy Holt-Still says many might take the sample ballot for granted. That is until it doesn’t arrive, which is what happened to her.

“And they should get on it before the election actually starts,” says Holt-Still. “If they were to address this when they knew they had a problem, which I know they’ve known for a long time, this would have been taken care of,” she says.

Holt Still says she opted out of the mail-in ballot and will vote in person.

What she did not do is opt out of receiving a sample ballot. Which is an option. But somehow, that’s the message the registrar’s office received, or rather that’s how the data appeared when the vendor received the request.

“So, opting out of a mail-in ballot should not opt you out of a sample ballot,” says Jamie Rodriguez with Washoe County Registrar’s Office. “We did have an error. When we pulled the data to send to our vendor some of those who opted out of mail-in ballots seemed to have been pulled into the opt out of sample ballots. So, we do have some voters who did not received sample ballots,” says Rodriguez Rodriquez says this was all an innocent mistake.

They believe about 1,000 voters have been impacted by the glitch.

She says these voters have two options. They can go on- line and look at a sample ballot and print it out themselves. Or she says call the registrar’s office so the sample ballot can be mailed out promptly.

Holt-Still says the clock is ticking.

“Why does everyone have to pick up a phone and tell the county they forgot somebody?” She says, “When they know who they forgot right off the get go.”

The registrar’s office says with voting underway they will have to wait until the primaries are over before finding out exactly what happened with the sample ballots and repair the glitch.

That will happen Rodriquez says well before the general election in November.

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