Santa Cruz Co. has vote-by-mail ballot backlog

The Santa Cruz County Clerk is calling this the worst delay she’s ever seen: an envelope mix-up has about 65,000 vote-by-mail voters without a ballot.

“We have had some delays before but not this bad,” said Gail Pellerin, Santa Cruz County Clerk.

The combination of a printer backlog and the ordering of the wrong envelopes, has Pellerin and her staff moving a lot quicker these days.

“We now have our vendor rushing an order of 65,000 envelopes to the mail house in Sacramento who is going to be inserting and getting the mail out,” she said.

Normally, vote-by-mail ballots are already distributed by Monday or Tuesday, but because of the problems here this week some voters won’t be getting those ballots until Thursday or Friday, Pellerin said.

She said vote-by-mail in Santa Cruz County is a huge deal because half the voters don’t come to the polls to vote. Of the 140,000 registered voters in the county, a little more than 70,000 vote by mail.

“The election is several weeks away, Nov. 4, but I understand people have busy schedules and if they are expecting that ballot to be there sooner, they need to call us or email us right away,” Pellerin said.

The last day to register to vote is Oct. 20.