Letter: Warning for voters who got a ballot by mail

Sandy Flowers
St Augustine, FL

Dear Historic City News Editor:

I just received my voting ballot by mail. The ballot was printed wrong, so, I am just letting you know in case you would like to notify your readers.

I had gone into the Supervisor of Elections office a week before the cutoff date to change my party affiliation so that I could vote for the Sheriff who will be governing my county.

Even though I went in a week early, I still received the wrong ballot. My neighbor also got the wrong ballot. I almost did not notice it and was ready to mail it back.

When I called Vicky Oakes office, Erika Ward told me that the ballots were already packed and ready to mail by the middle of July. So, I am not the only one affected by this.

I am afraid that if folks don’t look carefully, that they will send in the wrong ballot. Even though they went through the motions to be able to vote they are going to have to go another step to be sure they got the right ballot.

According to Erika, this mistake will only be caught at the supervisor’s office by eyesight. The computer will accept the vote on the wrong party ballot unless a poll worker catches the mistake and sends out a new ballot.

Can you see the potential for great confusion just to cast a vote?

If they had notified me that I should be checking for this problem I would have felt better about it. But nobody said a word when I was there.

I just verified that I would get a mail ballot so that I could vote for the sheriff and was told “yes”.