By Karen Gleason
The 830 Times
County Clerk Generosa “Janie” Ramon said Wednesday she and her team of election workers are dealing with ballot issues that have surfaced due to the most recent round of county and city redistricting.
Ramon said the issue was first brought to election workers’ attention when Del Rioan Arturo Rodriguez, who is seeking election to the District II seat on the Del Rio City Council, went to the civic center to cast his early ballot late Monday afternoon. When Rodriguez received his ballot, he found his council race with incumbent Jim DeReus was not on it.
Rodriguez immediately notified election workers and also alerted the 830 Times to the problem.
A similar situation occurred with a voter who went to the civic center on Tuesday.
Ramon met with the 830 Times today to explain the situation.
“It was good that Mr. Rodriguez realized the problem when he got his ballot, that his own race wasn’t on it, so of course he brought it to our attention. We checked everything, and that is one of the reasons I have staff from the voter registrar’s office here, so they were able to look him up, and when they looked him up, the ballot that had been assigned to him was not the same ballot we had in our system, even though our system generates those ballot styles from the report that we get from the voter registration office,” Ramon explained.
The crux of the problem, she said, is that the county voting precincts are different from the city voting precincts.
“In the case of Mr. Rodriguez, he happens to be (in) one of those city precincts, running for a city position. From the records from the voter registration, the ballot style that was attached to him, was (one particular style) and it needed to have been a (different ballot style), . . . and it had to do with the fact that he’s always lived in county voting precinct 30, but he was moved during redistricting to (county voting precinct) 10,” Ramon said.
Ramon said she and City Secretary Mari Acosta work to “line up” the county and city voting precincts.
“It can be very confusing for people, especially if they only intend to vote in one election. If they don’t care to vote in the school election or the other ones, they have to remember what their city voting precinct is,” Ramon said.
She said voters could check their voter registration cards, which were mailed to local voters earlier this year, which show both the voter’s county voting precinct and city voting precinct on the right side of the card.
“So once we looked at that, we knew that street where he lives was affected by the redistricting. We looked and sure enough, he was now in county voting precinct 10, but he was still listed in city voting precinct 30A,” Ramon said.
Ramon said the incident occurred at the very end of the day on Monday so Rodriguez’s ballot was “backed out” of the voting machine, and he was told he could come back Tuesday or any other day to cast his ballot.
“Once we knew he had a problem, we also decided to check everybody on his street . . . so when we started checking, we found some other voters, and I contacted the Secretary of State and they authorized me to make the change for those 13 voters,” Ramon said.
She said when those other voters go to vote, they will get the correct ballot style.
“Fortunately, none of them had come to vote yet,” she said.
Ramon also explained how voters could make sure they can cast ballots in elections where they are entitled to do so.
“The city secretary has sent me a map, and we’re going to put it up at the entrance to the voting area in the civic center, and we’re asking people, if you think you’re going to vote in the city, then we’ll look them up on the map, if they can tell me more or less where they are. If not, I have the voter registration office here, and they will look at your voter registration card and your address and we will find out if everything’s correct,” Ramon said.
“We have the ability to look up your name and everything in the machine that’s going to code your ballot. If it’s the right one, it’s not going to be a problem. If it’s the wrong one, we can make the changes so that you get the right ballot, and you can vote,” she added.
Ramon said she does expect other issues may arise, since this is the first joint election involving both the city and county since redistricting occurred.
She reminded voters who live outside the city limits they will not be able to cast ballots in the city election. She said this includes voters in county voting precincts 13, 20, 32, 33, 42 and 43.
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