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Tuesday, Nov. 03, 2009
Merced County elections office addressing issues at polling places
The Merced County Office of Elections has been responding to issues at precincts around the county this morning.
Karen Adams, county registrar of voters, said she started receiving calls from poll workers about minor issues last night and before dawn this morning.
By far the largest blip in the voting process has been in Atwater, where residents along an Atwater Elementary School District voting line weren't given ballots for the proper candidates.
According to the school district's maps, Fruitland is a dividing line with residents on the north side of the road voting in trustee area five and residents on the south side voting for trustee area three.
Trustee area five is up for election and area three is not.
The elections office learned of the problem before 10 a.m. When they arrived with new, corrected ballots, only eight votes had been cast and none of the ineligible voters had cast ballots.
There was another ballot problem in the Franklin precinct -- near Beachwood Drive and Santa Fe -- for some voters in the Merced Union High School District race there. The precinct had no copies of a certain ballot type, Adams said.
The error was the result of a mistake by the ballot printer and packager, Adams said. New ballots were sent to the polling place after a 25 minute delay.
There are 61 different ballots in Merced County this election, compared to 26 in November 2007. The increased number of different ballots is the result of newly-created trustee districts in several county school districts.
Keep checking MercedSunStar.com for updates on this developing story.
Reporter Danielle E. Gaines can be reached at (209) 385-2407 or dgaines@mercedsun-star.com.
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