October 19, 2022

So this happened, in Riverside County, (population 2.4 million) California, according to the Los Angeles Times:

About 5,000 people in Riverside County will receive duplicate vote-by-mail ballots for the November midterm election after a “computer system error,” but the mistake won’t allow voters to cast ballots twice, according to the county registrar.

The computer error was caught over the weekend, but not before 5,000 mail-in ballots were sent to voters living in Canyon Lake, Menifee, Murrieta, Wildomar and Winchester, said Rebecca Spencer, the Riverside County registrar of voters.

Spencer recommended anyone who receives identical ballots to destroy the extra copy.

Nothing to see here, little technical glitch, just throw that extra ballot away, and move along. They’ve got this. Elections are always clean in California. Problem over, right? 

Not exactly.

Start with the technical claim that the second ballots sent cannot be counted. 

On Twitter, one person did argue that such things aren’t exactly as cut-and-dried as the Riverside County registrar of the voters, Rebecca Spencer, claims:

If that’s true, a great gaslight is going up about the security of the mail balloting system and whether two votes can be cast from one voter. One wonders what becomes of the thrown-away ballots, assuming the duplicates are thrown away, as well as those that are cast twice.

The L.A. Times, though, takes the registrar’s word for it that the problem is all fixed.