Printer to reimburse county $10,000 for ballot error, says registrar

Prince William County General Registrar Eric Olsen says a Washington State-based ballot printing service claimed responsibility for a $10,000 Election Day snafu.

Olsen said that K&H Printing in Everette, Washington, produced larger ballots than ballot-scanning machines in Prince William County could accommodate. The error led to a small number of ballots being hand counted in a Special Election on Tuesday, February 24, 2023.

K&H will reimburse $10,000 to the county for the ballot error, said Olsen.

Republican Bob Weir won the election against Democrat Kerensa Sumers, who were both vying to serve the remainder of former Gainesville District Supervisor Peter Candland’s term on the Board of County Supervisors, which ends December 31, 2023.

Olsen said the ballots worked fine during testing in the weeks leading up to Election Day. He told PLN the county’s Electoral Board would implement changes during the ballot testing phase for elections later in the year, though he wasn’t clear on what changes could be made.

“We generated several plans today we are going to weigh.  We will also await a full report from the printer to see how they plan to quality control this issue in the future. We’ll discuss and explore the issue more at our next [electoral board] meeting in March in plenty of time to prep for the Primary Election in June,” Olsen told PLN.

All Board of County Supervisors and School Board seats are up during the November 2023 General Election. Several candidates face Primary Election challengers in June 2023.

Olsen said fewer than 5% of voters had a wrong-sized ballot on Tuesday. They were all hand-counted by officers at the end of Election Day in precincts with an equal number of Democratic and Republican officers present.