Hundreds of Pierce County voters received 2 ballots for the upcoming general election
The Pierce County Auditor’s Office has fixed record-keeping to ensure hundreds of Pierce County voters who received duplicate ballots for the Nov. 5 election can’t vote twice.
The Auditor’s Office office found 350 voters — .07 percent of the county’s 519,000 ballots sent out — were affected by record discrepancies after a News Tribune’s inquiry into duplicate ballots.
Many of the voters who had two entries had visited the Department of Licensing recently, Mike Rooney the Pierce County elections manager said.
“This concerns us, and that’s why as soon as we heard about it we looked into it,” Rooney said.
The bulk of information for the county elections office comes from the Department of Licensing, where residents go to change a driver’s license. If there are discrepancies in the licensing office, they appear in the registration database.
The election’s office database stored variations on the affected voters’ names, including different spacing, spelling or hyphenation. One voter who received a duplicate ballot, John DeGuiseppi, or De Guiseppi, got a new driver’s license in August. The license has his name without a space between “De” and “Guiseppi,” but his voter registration includes the space.
He called the elections office, and officials corrected the discrepancy right away, DeGuiseppi told The News Tribune.
The 350 registered voters will receive letters asking they return either ballot, Rooney said. The county has merged the two name variations to create one record, so even if they submit both ballots, their vote will count once, he said.
Whichever of the two ballots matches the record will be counted, the other will be kicked out.
Washington state’s director of elections , Lori Augino, said a new statewide voter system allows for more visibility and helps identify name variations.
“The system can identify where there may be a name variation,” Augino said. “So it’s important for us to continue to do this due diligence daily, weekly monthly. We send (the counties) reminders to go do the checks.”
