MADERA – The Madera County Elections Department is headed to court over the Madera Unified School District Area 5 election between Steve Duncan and Lucy Salazar. Thursday morning Madera County Clerk Rebecca Martinez will ask Judge James Oakley to extend the deadline to certify that election from December 6th, 2018 to at least six months from now.
On November 26th, 2018 Attorney Michael Linden from Lozano Smith Attorneys at Law, Madera County’s contracted County Counsel, said in a letter to both candidates that Ms. Martinez does not feel she can certify the election at this time because of an error in the mail ballot merging process that allowed voters outside of the MUSD Area 5 boundaries to improperly vote in this elections.
Once Ms. Martinez is granted the extension to the certification by the judge, the election will go back to the Madera Unified Board of Trustees to decide if they want to request a special election to supersede the November 6th results. According to MUSD board president Ed McIntyre the board will meet on December 11th to vote on a resolution on this matter. McIntyre said, “The election will probably be held on March 5th, 2019.”
As BVN reported on November 16th, 2018, the Madera County Election Department discovered a mistake was made by the County’s contracted ballot printer. Approximately 400 voters in the Madera area were sent ballots that included an extra local contest. In other words certain races were included on voter ballots where the voter did not live in the area for that particular race.
After receiving a call from a concerned voter the Friday before Election Day, the Elections Department immediately notified the ballot printer and officials began looking into the issue. The contracted ballot printer, ProVote Solutions of Porterville, CA confirmed that they were able to identify both the mistake and the remedy to prevent it from happening again.
The Elections Department conducted extensive research while carefully maintaining the integrity of the process and was able to determine the complete number of ballots affected. Once the research was complete they began notifying affected candidates. In all but one contest the issue did not impact the outcome of the election based on the election results so far.
Of those 183 counted incorrect ballots, 85 of them were in the Madera Unified School District Trustee Area 5 race between Lucy Salazar and Steve Duncan. On election night that race was within one percent but since that night has the difference has expanded to Mrs. Salazar being ahead as on Friday November 15th, 67 votes.
Ms. Martinez feels the only remedy in this case is to conduct another election with the corrected ballots. Again, ballots will be mailed out to each voter in MUSD Area 5 and voters will have until March 5th, 2019 to return their ballots. Martinez said this Special Election will not cost taxpayers one dime as ProVote Solutions of Porterville has agreed to pay all of the expenses for the election.
Voters will be able to either return their ballots by mail or drop them off at the Madera County Government Center in person.
BVN will issue an update to this story following tomorrow morning court hearing.
