Thousands of mail-in ballots not sent to Gonzales voters

Election Day is just two weeks away and thousands of voters in Gonzales are still waiting to get their absentee ballots in the mail.

It is a hiccup one city official is worried might affect the outcome of an important sales tax measure.

The Monterey County Elections Department acknowledges about 2,000 mail-in ballots have not been sent yet, but they assure Gonzales residents they will get them in time to vote.

“Normally, our absentee ballots or our mail-in ballots are received usually around the first of October, so people have plenty of time to fill out their ballots and submit them before Election Day or even on Election Day,” said Liz Silva, a Gonzales resident and mayor pro tem of the city.

Silva posted about the problem on social media and got big response.

“I got a lot of replies from people, and not just from Gonzales, but from other valley cities as well, indicating that they too had not received their mail-in ballots. And that concerned me,” she said.

The county registrar says their printing vendor did not print the mail-in ballots for Gonzales voters by mistake, but it has been resolved.

“They produced the ballots for our voters in Gonzalez and they put it in the mail today, so by Friday, our voters should be receiving their vote-by-mail ballots on time for this election,” said Claudio Valenzuela, the registrar of voters for Monterey County.

About 147,000 mail-in ballots are sent across Monterey County for elections, and this is the first time the registrar says this has happened.

There are about 3,000 registered voters in Gonzales. 2,000 of those vote by mail.

Still, Silva is worried the delay could impact Measure O, which if passed, would increase the city’s local sales tax by half a percent from 0.5 to 1.0 percent.

“I don’t want that to not be voted on because people don’t have a ballot,” said Silva. “Understanding that they can go and cast a ballot at the polling place on Election Day by using a provisional ballot, but I think that’s an inconvenience that our residents don’t need to go through.”

The elections department says the delay is only in Gonzales, but they are happy to respond to individual problems.

“If there is any voter in Monterey County that has not received their ballot and they are vote-by-mail voters, give us a call,” said Valenzuela. “We can issue a second ballot for them immediately, we cancel the first one and issue a second one.”

Valenzuela says their printing vendor does have safeguard to make sure all ballots are made, and they are working to make sure this does not happen again.