Worrying about ballots

“Worrying about ballots”, Carmel Pine Cone—Sept. 3, 2021

It was with disbelief that I read your article on multiple ballots. “Thank you” to Carmel resident Adam Moniz for reporting this incident.

Mr. Moniz notified the DMV of a change of residence in Carmel. It seems like this information should have been handled as an update to the DMV database, on an existing entry. It appears that instead it was handled as the addition of a new resident. He then received two ballots.

Apparently, the duplication is in the voter registration database and possibly the DMV database. In the article, Gina Martinez, Monterey County Registrar, said that this is not a problem. They would eventually catch the duplication.

I am sure that the double entry would eventually be found, but by what process? The name is different since one entry included a middle name. The physical address is different. Zip codes determine the city, not how it was spelled. Possibly this could be a father and son living in different houses, but sharing a family post office box (in Carmel-by-the-Sea)? Martinez tells us that somehow these entries might get red-flagged and require further clarification, possibly signature verification?

Problems with the DMV are not a new story. There have been multiple articles over too many years of the on-going issues. It is amazing that it has not been corrected by now. And they feed data to the registrar of voters, so that database might not be any better.

In “normal times” this might appear to be trivial, and Ms. Martinez’s statement not to worry could be taken at face value. In these times of allegations of suspected voter fraud and conspiracy theories, whether true or false, one would hope that these agencies would be more diligent in how data is handled, to prevent this type of issue from happening.

Voters deserve a better explanation, not just “don’t worry about it.”

Hans Haselbach, Carmel Valley