SAN DIEGO — If you're a registered voter in San Diego County, your mail-in ballot will be arriving any day.
In order to make sure it's counted, you must fill it out carefully. It all seems pretty simple, but the Registrar of Voters office said you would be surprised at all the mistakes they see.
"What we see voters do is circle around the bubble. They put a dot in the middle of the bubble. They do a check mark in the bubble," said Registrar of Voters Michael Vu.
Voters must fill in each oval completely with a blue or black ink pen.
"In one election, we had a ballot where the person left their pen inside the envelope, so when we ran it through our sorter, it jammed our sorter," he said.
The list goes on and on.
Vu told News 8 voters have also accidentally included other things in their ballot envelopes.
"We’ve seen people’s mortgage payments, their checks inside of it, so please double check what you’re sealing inside of [the envelope]," he said.
He said they've even received ballots from previous elections.
"I anticipate we'll see one in this upcoming election where there's a ballot from the 2016 or 2018 election," he said.
Vu said the majority of ballot mistakes can be corrected -as long as the ballot was sent in well ahead of Election Day. For example, if there was a signature dispute, his office will contact you.
"Another common mistake is we see two ballots in one envelope," he said.
Even if you live in the same household, you must return your ballot in the envelope that you are assigned to. Postage is not required. A signature is required for each envelope.
Vu said the bottom line is voters need to read the directions:
