Smudges Cause Vote-By-Mail Problems In Santa Clara County

SAN JOSE (KCBS) -- Voting officials in Santa Clara County scrambled Tuesday morning to fix printing problems with thousands of mail-in ballots.

Many ballots have been rejected because of ink smudges on the paper.

KCBS' Matt Bigler Reports:

Election officials have been using rubber erasers to rub out the smudges, which were caused by toner ink.

Matt Morales with the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters said they are being extra-careful to only erase excess toner and not votes.

"The erasers usually wouldn't affect the ink from a pen that the voter uses to mark their selections," he said. "But even with that, we made sure that we weren't erasing over a voter's marked selections."

The company that printed the ballots, ProVoteSolutions of Porterville, has agreed to pay for any extra costs associated with the misprint, although officials said that is still being worked out.

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