About 2,000 Fresno County ballots have been rejected for the March primary. Here’s why
Some 2,000 ballots — roughly .42% of registered voters — have been rejected so far in Fresno County because of a disparity in signatures, the County Clerk’s Office confirmed Wednesday.
Fresno mayoral candidate Andrew Janz, who is running against former police chief Jerry Dyer, said he was notified the ballots either contained missing signatures — or had signatures that don’t appear to match the signatures on file with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
The primary election March 3 is the first in Fresno County in which every registered voter got a ballot by mail. Voters can cast ballots by mail or go to any one of the 53 voting centers to vote.
“What this means is we’re going to have to contact each and every one of those voters who had their ballots rejected,” Janz said. “I just want to bring attention to voters to go online and make sure their ballots are counted.”
Janz stressed that the rejected ballots are not at the fault of the Registrar of Voters or County Clerk. The list of rejected ballots does not say who the voters tried to vote for, he said.
Ballots are routinely examined by a machine and at least two staffers as they come into the Fresno County Clerk’s Office, according to Brandi Orth, the Registrar of Voters.
“(T)here are cases where a good comparison cannot be made between the two documents,” Orth said in an email. “These ballot envelopes remain ‘in review.’ “
Orth said the number of rejected ballots reported thus far is fairly routine for an election, and the issue has nothing to do with Fresno County’s new voting system. She did not have the number of rejected ballots for the 2018 election readily available Wednesday.
The Clerk’s Office will send a note in the mail about the ballots to each voter whose ballot was rejected. Orth said voters have until March 28 — two days before the election’s certification is due — to clear up the problem.
The new system has not been without some problems.
Orth said earlier this week that less than a half-percent of registered voters received two ballots in the mail. The voters’ names appeared two ways in the voter roll.
Fresno County has 471,384 registered voters, according to the latest tally from the Clerk’s Office, which means an estimated 2,300 people received duplicate ballots.
To check if your ballot has been processed, go to the Secretary of State’s website, https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/. For more, call 559-600-8683.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 3:08 PM.
