“always double-check the ballot you’re filling out to make sure it’s the accurate ballot”

“Dear PoPville,

Something very concerning happened yesterday afternoon when I was voting.

I voted at the Palisades Recreation Center (a Ward 3 polling place) and am a voting resident of neighborhood 3D05 in Ward 3 which seems to cover most of the Kent neighborhood in NW. My husband and I recently moved to this neighborhood a few months ago and I planned to do Same Day Voting Registration.

I was directed to the Same Day Registration desk, and after the volunteer input my address and all my information, which I double-checked, my confirmation receipt/ticket had my accurate address but the wrong voting zone.

It reflected at the bottom of the ticket “3D01” – not my zone, 3D05. I unfortunately didn’t notice this until I had my ballot and was filling out, and realized the familiar names of my local representatives were not listed, and then realized that my ticket had been coded with the incorrect neighborhood, and therefore I’d received the incorrect ballot.

I quickly went back to the desk where the ticket had been issued, and expressed that the wrong neighborhood had been reflected and patiently asked if my ticket could be updated so that I could have the correct ballot, and suggested perhaps there was some of system glitch or error, since my address had generated an incorrect neighborhood coding on the ticket. The older man behind the desk got very defensive and insisted it was not his fault, and told me that this “certainly” wouldn’t affect others and that as long as he corrected mine at that moment, and got me the right ballot, that was all I needed to worry about. He even proceeded to tell me “If you know so much about the voting process, why don’t you come back here and run this system yourself. Because I know what I’m doing here, and you’re rubbing your problem in my face.” Another older man sat down, only having heard part of the conversation and even added, laughing, “I highly doubt a voting problem of yours would affect ME.”

I am concerned this coding glitch that happened in my voting center could have happened to other voters. My address had been entered into the system 100% correctly and somehow generated an incorrect neighborhood code. Those who may be less informed on the very localized reps campaigning in their area may not catch something like this (I almost missed it myself), and errors like this happening on a greater scale are extremely problematic.

There is a chance that this only was happening in my polling place, and I sincerely hope that there’s a possibly it was a one-off glitch, but this is just a reminder to people be aware of your voting precinct and always double-check the ballot you’re filling out to make sure it’s the accurate ballot.

I wanted to get the word out so that future voters could at least be aware/someone could rectify the issue for the future.”