Lancaster County leaders say they are intent on replacing the vendor they hired last year to print and send thousands of mail-in ballots to voters a move prompted by several errors the printer made that wound up requiring a time-consuming hand count of 12,000 primary election ballots that began Friday and stretched into Monday.
County Commissioner Ray DâAgostino said the county will reopen the mail balloting contract for bid in the next few weeks, and the county is working with its solicitor on how it can hold the current vendor accountable for its errors.Â
But why was the county paying an out-of-state company to print thousands of ballots? And what background did that company have in the complex business of producing mail-in voting materials?
An error by Lancaster County s mail-in ballot vendor means more than half of all mail-in ballots will have to be hand-counted, causing a significant delay in final results â likely into the weekend.Â
Michigan Elections Resources printed multi-sheet ballots in the wrong order, affecting approximately 14,000 ballots, Lancaster County Board of Elections officials said Tuesday. Those ballots cannot be fed through the countyâs ballot scanners. Â
Roughly 27,000 mail-in ballots were requested for the primary. As of Tuesday afternoon, nearly 18,000 had been returned. We ll be starting the hand count at the end of the week, weekend; we re fleshing that out at the moment,  said Christa Miller, chief clerk of the board of elections. She said she anticipates the hand county will take three to four days to complete, and final results will be available by early next week.Â
Printing error affects about 14,000 mail-in ballots, says Lancaster County elections board
Updated May 18, 2021;
A printing error is affecting the counting of an estimated 14,000 mail-in ballots in Lancaster County, county elections officials said.
While opening mailed-in ballots Tuesday during the pre-canvass process, workers noticed that the ballots containing multiple sheets needed in some cases to list all the candidates and the ballot questions had been printed in the wrong order by the ballot vendor, Michigan Election Resources.
A news release from the county Board of Elections said pages 1 and 3 were mistakenly printed on the front and back of the same sheet, as were pages 2 and 4. If read in sequence, the board said, the pages would read 1,3,2 and 4.
The Lancaster County election officials on Wednesday expressed dismay about problems with the vendor hired to print mail-in ballots for the May 18 primary election.
Last week it was revealed that more than 2,700 voters received incorrect instructions on how to return their mail-in ballots, while approximately 100-150 voters in Mount Joy received the wrong ballots and return envelopes.
Christa Miller, chief clerk of the board of elections, said both problems stem from the vendor the county uses to stuff ballot envelopes, Michigan Election Resources.
âLetâs be clear, this is the vendorâs mistake,â said Ray DâAgostino, chair of the board of elections.
By Colby HallMay 11th, 2021, 8:44 am
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
While the Republican party grapples with an existential battle between the truth and following a leader prone to clear exaggerations and lies, former President
Donald Trump reiterated false claims that he won the 2020 election, but with a level of weirdness that makes it hard to ignore.
Since his deplatforming from nearly all of social media, Trump has relied on sending statements from his Save America PAC or his Office of the 45th President desk. Much of these statements lack anything new or newsy and are often ignored. But in this instance, the analogy was so weird and at a new level of desperation that it seemed fitting.