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Candidate Info Missing From 100,000 Sample Ballots In Santa Clara County

SAN JOSE (KPIX 5) – Voters in Santa Clara County are about to get a sample ballot in the mail that won't be much help for the November election. The ballot is missing entire races and various candidates.

Santa Clara School Board candidate Noelani Sallings said her email blew up when supporters couldn't find her on the newest sample ballots.

"They were questioning, what's going on? Why are you not on the ballot in some of these places?" Sallings told KPIX 5.

Sallings and her competitors, plus candidates for the Gavilan Community College board in Gilroy were nowhere to be found on about 100,000 sample ballots mailed out by the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.

Instead, huge blank spots inside the ballots where the candidates' names and their statements should have been.

"For down ballot races like ours, sometimes this is the only way for candidates to get their names out. So being left off two thirds of the ballots is a really huge blow for us," Sallings said.

Especially in the pocketbook: Candidates pay money to get those statements printed.

Sallings said, "$2,500. So that's $2,500 of grassroots money that was raised and it just disappeared."

Registrar of Voters spokesperson Matt Morales told KPIX 5, "There was a programming error that happened when our staff was setting up the election in our election management software."

Morales said it's not something proofreaders picked up because those races were never programmed in.

The county will now have to mail out new sample ballots, and will be alerting voters by email and phone calls about the mistake.

Fortunately, it happened before people begin voting by mail, which starts next week.

"The corrected information is going to beat the ballots out to voters. So they will have the full information in their hands before they cast their ballots," Morales said.

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