Hundreds of duplicate absentee ballots sent in Bernalillo County

So, what are we to make of this?

As reported recently, see references below, hundreds of duplicate absentee ballots were sent to Bernalillo County registered voters.

KOAT: Hundreds of duplicate absentee ballots sent in Bernalillo County

KRQE: Error leads to 452 duplicate absentee ballots being sent to Bernalillo County voters

I was giving a talk to some voters on the evening of the day these reports broke out. One of the audience members questioned as to whether or not this was intentional or accidental. Many people on social media are quick to jump to the conclusion that it was intentional and this is the beginning of stealing the election. I withheld my opinion until I could dig into this some more.

As a candidate for office, I hold a USPS Marketing Mail permit so I can save money (substantial amounts) on my campaign mailings. Many candidates go through third parties to do their mailings but I am on a tight budget so I have to be innovative. In my case, I took the time to print my own mailings and envelopes and use the USPS Marketing Mail services for substantial savings on postage.

As part of that process, I upload a list of names and addresses that I want to send my mail to into the USPS system which then verifies addresses for me and provides me with a list of addresses and barcodes to use on my envelopes. The USPS machines use the barcodes for automated processing of my mails. I then print the envelopes with the barcodes and place my letters within the envelopes. There are more rules involved but this is enough information for the current topic.

I was working with a list of 6000 recipients that I wanted to send mail to. However, it is not practical for me to send them all at once so I broke them up into batches of 500. I was very concerned that I might accidentally process a single batch of 500 more than once so I set up a system of processes and controls to minimize the risk of that happening.

Given my experience with using my USPS Marketing Mail Permit, I suspected something went wrong with the mailing process that the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office was using. However, rather than speculating that this is what happened, I contacted the County Clerk’s Office and asked them to provide me with more details as to what happened.

As it turns out, I was correct. They accidentally processed the same batch of qualified absentee voters twice. In response, they have put in place an enhanced validation processes to ensure that files sent to vendors are accurate and free from duplications and they have added additional oversight and coordination with the vendor.

These are good initial responses. However, if I am elected County Clerk, I will ensure that we do a thorough review of the process and seek to “build quality in” rather than relying on human inspection/validation. In my case, I built controls into the process that I use to prevent duplicates rather than relying on my ability to validate the lists. In my experience, any time we can rely on the processes rather than the humans in the processes we will have a greater chance of preventing errors.

So, how do I answer those who claim that this was intentional and the beginning of another stolen election? I would suggest that they provide more than speculation and innuendo to support their claims. Even better, they should consider becoming an election worker or volunteer. They can then be part of the process and learn what is actually going on rather than speculating as to what they think is going on.

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