Early voters catch ballot blunder in Trumbull County

By Ed Runyan

One voter was glad she caught the mistake so her vote could be counted but wondered about other errors.

WARREN — When Kathy Jones and her husband, William, of Warren went to the Trumbull County Board of Elections on Tuesday to vote early, their top issue was the school levy.

Kathy Jones is a retired Warren schoolteacher and a big supporter of the school district, she said.

She and her husband waited in line, filled out the paperwork, received their ballots and began to vote.

But when they got to the end of the ballots, they noticed something was wrong. Instead of the Warren school levy on their ballots, they were being asked to vote on a LaBrae school levy.

The couple brought the issue to a poll worker’s attention and learned that an elections worker had given Kathy Jones and her husband ballots for a precinct in Warren Township instead of the city of Warren.

Officials apologized and gave both of them new ballots. They completed their new ballots, and everything was fine, Kathy Jones said.

But as she thought about what happened, Kathy Jones started to wonder whether that type of mistake could have been more serious if it had happened to an elderly person who might not have caught the problem in time.

In such a situation, would officials have disallowed such a person’s vote on the grounds that they had voted in the wrong precinct?

Jodi Fiorenzo Dibble, deputy director of Trumbull’s elections board, said the answer to that question is that the elections staff would have caught the mistake — but not in time to completely correct the error.

Elections workers would have caught the mistake when they reviewed the absentee ballots. Comparing the ballot with the envelope they filled out would have shown that the person voted in the wrong precinct, Fiorenzo Dibble said.

At that point, staff members would have submitted that ballot to the elections board, which can allow the ballot or disallow it.

In that situation, the elections board does not have the option to correct a vote specific to the person’s city or precinct — in this case the Warren schools issue — because there would be no way to correct that, Fiorenzo Dibble said.

So what would be the chances of that error occurring with a record number of people voting early?

She said there were a couple of such errors in the primary, and a few mistakes have been discovered so far this election.

The main reason for the mistakes is that the elections board hires temporary workers for about month at each election, and they are not as experienced as the full-time employees, Fiorenzo Dibble said.

Another issue is fatigue, she noted, with elections workers being exhausted trying to keep up with the workload this election, she said.

A third question the board faces is if there is a way for voters to verify their precinct number before they vote to make sure they are given the right ballot.

Fiorenzo Dibble said voters can find out their polling place and precinct number by either using the board’s Web site, using the postcard mailed to their home before the election or calling the board offices.

The board does not post a list of polling locations with their precinct number at its office, she said.

runyan@vindy.com