Jefferson County voters are casting their ballots for “President/Vice President of the Untied States.” “Yes, it’s a typo,” lamented County Auditor Donna Eldridge. Eldridge and her staff didn’t notice the mistake until it was brought to her attention Tuesday by the Peninsula Daily News, which had been alerted by a Port Townsend voter earlier in the day. The mistake appears on 22,596 ballots that were sent out to voters last Wednesday. As of Tuesday afternoon, 2,901 had been returned in the all-mail election that ends at 8 p.m. Nov. 6.
“We went over this several times with five staff members, but somehow this one got through,” Eldridge said. Proofreading is done by teams, with one reading ballot language to the other. Eldridge said the mistake will not cause confusion or affect the voting process since, as “with many words, it doesn’t matter as long as you have the first letters and the last letters spelled right, people know what you mean.”