Shasta Registrar of Voters Explains How Ballots Affected by “Ink Overspray” Issue Will Be Processed
Elections staff are using a state-approved ballot duplication process to ensure the votes of all Shasta County citizens are counted, Registrar of Voter Tom Toller said. He explained that the process, which involves teams of three, ensures that every vote is accurately duplicated.
Update: 10.31.24 3:55 pm: We’ve updated the story to include information about the storage of ballots.
Registrar of Voters Tom Toller said he’s eager to reassure voters across Shasta County that a process has been developed to allow for safe and secure voting, despite a printing issue that’s affected about 70% of the ballots processed in Shasta County so far.
The issue, which is described as an “ink overspray” is invisible to the naked eye and was not discovered during the mandatory pre-election testing of the machines. Ballots with the ink issue are being rejected by machine scanners because they can’t read the barcodes that help them register which ballot type is being processed.
During a media press conference today, Toller said the ink issue was identified this week after his staff began scanning ballots earlier than usual after reports from Nevada County, California, of a ballot processing issue related to printing. Both counties use the same printer, Runbeck.
The Elections Office has received about 32,500 ballots back from voters so far. As they’re processed, signatures are verified and then ballots are separated from the envelopes that they were received in. Once separated, those ballots are no longer identifiable as connected to a specific voter.
The ballots are then scanned by a ballot processing machine. Those that are accepted by the ballot scanning machine are still being processed as normal, Toller said. Any rejected by the machine, including all those with the ink overspray issue, are being handled via a different method, which Toller described as a legally allowable duplication process.
Toller said ballot duplication is an “absolutely ordinary thing” that’s legal and commonplace in every election, and is used when a ballot is not scannable, often due to issues like coffee stains or extraneous writing on the ballot.
While there are typically only a small number of ballots that need to be duplicated, this election the Shasta County Office anticipates duplicating about 70% of ballots, which is the percentage that seem to be affected by the printing issue so far. It’s not clear yet whether all ballots within the county’s possession will be affected at the same rate as early batches.
In order to accurately handle duplication for so many ballots, the Elections Office has formed a team to address ballot duplication, Toller said.
“Crucially,” Toller explained, “we have a team of 12 employees, all of whom are County employees, nonpartisan . . . . and they will work in teams of three to (duplicate) these ballots.”
Toller said ballots that aren’t scannable by machine will have their markings duplicated onto another official ballot by one individual. Another individual will then check to make sure those markings are the same on the second ballot as on the first and then a third person will audibly call out the results.
Observers are encouraged to witness the proceedings from behind a line, close enough to easily hear the results called out by the third staff member.
Those new ballots will then be machine scanned while the original voted ballots, those affected by ink overspray, will be held in secure storage in case needed in future to compare with the duplicated version.
“At this point because of this situation that’s arisen,” Toller said, “we’re prioritizing the accuracy of our balance and not the efficiency.”
Toller said due to the added time of this process, it’s likely that the first post-election update of ballot numbers will be issued to the public later than usual.
“Usually, the first update (on ballot results post-election day) is the Friday following the election,” Toller said. “It may take us a bit more time to process all of the ballots.”
“But what I want the public to understand is that we are taking this very seriously,” Toller assured. “We’re trying to ensure that every ballot that’s been cast by a Shasta County voter is going to be counted, and that the ballots that they marked are the ballots that are going to be tabulated. They’re just going to be (duplicated) ballots.”
Ballots are being duplicated onto blank ballot stock brought to the Elections Office by Runbeck, the printing company whose error has affected local ballots. Runbeck has also provided replacement ballots for all 52 precincts.
Toller, who was only appointed to the position of Registrar of Voters in June, is conducting his very first election this fall with the help of Assistant Registrar of Voters Joanna Francescut, who has worked in the Elections Office for sixteen years.
He told the press today, October 31, that since starting he’s learned just how complex the job really is.
“There’s an incredible amount of operational technicality that I was completely unaware of,” Toller continued, “and that, as I’ve learned, is absolutely essential to conducting a fair election.”
He said he’s aware that some people are concerned about issues of election fraud.
“All I can tell you is that as I’ve worked here in Shasta County with my team, I have seen no evidence of any type of fraud or malfeasance.”
Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.
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I don’t get why it is legal for a third party to duplicate the affected ballots and why it is not legal to simply hand count them? This does not make sense to me at all. If you want to duplicate them then I say, hand count them first and then duplicate away and run them through the machines and we will have a solution in the mix.
Can some of you not always revert to character assassination or name calling and just have a clean comment with some factual content?
And I presume some of “this nonsense will stop” when some of you stop antagonizing people. I totally believe in free speech, however some of this is just a lot of space and energy sucking blah, blah, blah. I’d like to once in awhile see a positive solution presented if there’s a problem. This continual rhetoric does not bring us as a community together.
I want my old MTV back from the 80s.
Like.
I want my old paper ballots, hand counted back from the 80s.😜
What are ya thinking these ballots where the ink ran are printed on? Plastic? Tinfoil?
Btw, someone needs to tell Hobbs that just because she prints out her own ‘press badge’s, that doesn’t really make her member of the press.
Where is all you reporting, Laura???
Oh but that’s right, it is Halloween. She must have been dressing up for it.
To be fair, Benjamin Nowain is also a non-credentialed journalist (no journalism degree) who has his own self-printed press badge for his Breakdown show, but because folks on this website and anewscafe agree with his politics, they don’t make an issue of it.
Gittes: There were three citizen-style journalists at the press conference, including Hobbs, Nowain and Lori Bridgeford. We did consider this during our editorial process for this article when deciding whether to highlight Hobbs in a photo. Importantly, neither Nowain nor Bridgeford focuses on election activism as their primarily role in Shasta County, so we felt our focus on Hobbs, who does, was appropriate. Also, I would pushback on the idea that Shasta Scout agrees with Nowain’s politics, whatever they may be.
I would contend that Nowain is an elections activist. When he was not appointed to the Elections Commission, he and his wife initiated a sit-in in the board chambers. That’s activism by any objective standard, even if it’s not Nowain’s primary focus.
Gittes: The sit-in by Jenny Nowain was not directly related to elections. However I will certainly agree with you that both Nowain and Bridgford do regularly engage in county-related activism, their activism however is much broader than Hobbs’ which has been almost exclusively focused on elections or other topics related to her prior failed candidacy for the county board.
@Gittes
But Benjamin is actually reporting frequently and on a regular basis.
Whether you like or agree with his articles or videos, he is actually reporting on issues.
Where is the reporting of Hobbs?
Man, that cartoon character press pass is really something. I remember a day the SCBOS Chambers was vacated but the MAGA CEO let legal loser Hobbs, endorsed by another cartoon show character Mr. Pillow, stay in the chambers as an official member of the press, after all, she had a pass! But, what can one expect from a couple of silly people doing the bidding of the Jones, Crye, Kelstorm extreme particen authoritarianism nightmare. When is this nonsense going to stop?
It will stop when all three are finally out of office.
Cue:
The Doors
The End
XX
So let’s see:
1.There was a problem, and there is a solution that still follows the law.
2. Every vote is still going to be counted.
3. There is still going to be statistical sampling to make sure that every vote that was cast was counted accurately.
4. Most likely Runbeck is going to be on the hook for this and have to pay.
5. Observers and media are being encouraged to observe the whole process for transparency.
So at the end of the day everything is going to be okay because the team at Shasta county elections is being proactive and transparent.
Undetectable ink “over spray.” Okay. BS as usual. Voting is as pure as it was before the orange clown. Ya’ll can’t come up with anything new? Not enough pets eaten in your town?? Not enough Dems sucking out the blood of the unwanted babies.
**NUTS. And ya’ll can drown in an ocean of your own bs when the KAMALA wins, then you can all go smoke your Bethel healings.
LOL,
COMMON SENSE
Thanks Shasta Scout for the excellent coverage.And thanks Mr. Toller for stepping up to the plate, with honestly, integrity and full transparency! special thanks to Joanna and to all the incredible ROV staff that have in the face of threats and conspiracy nut job court failures, are performing with stellar results on the behalf of the Citizens of Shasta County!
Looking at the agenda for the next Supervisors Meeting I see that one of or biggest Big Lie conspiracy pushers will be going on the war path against the vote. But Big Lie Jones has nothing but misogyny, racism, sexism blow hard bluster. It will be so good for or county to see Jones leave and for the county to return to Safe And Sane!
Is Runbeck reimbursing the county for its additional labor costs?
Was the Runbeck ballot duplication and printing software/hardware suite (Novus/Sentio) incapable of automating the ballot duplication procedure?