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Sudbury’s Town Clerk is urging voters who received a mail ballot to check immediately to make sure it is a ballot for the Sudbury town election.
The town received an unknown number of ballots for the Lexington town election mixed in with Sudbury ballots, said Beth Klein, Town Clerk. “We think we received only a handful of Lexington ballots from the printer,” but she does not know exactly. As of Wednesday morning, the clerk’s office had heard from “about seven” people who had received the wrong ballot.
The ballots arrived pre-folded from the printer, and the incorrect ballots were inadvertently inserted in the envelopes to Sudbury voters. “We missed it,” she said, noting her office has already processed between 2,700 and 2,800 requests for mail ballots for the town election.
Voters should “check your ballot right away. If it is not correct, call us and we will send you the correct ballot. You don’t need to return the other ballot to us.” The Lexington election was held March 2 and the results of that election are final.
If voters wait until the last minute to check and find the wrong ballot, “they can come in to our office and vote absentee until noon Friday before the election. And you can vote in person on Election Day, even if you have been sent a mail ballot,” said Klein.
A notice about the error is posted on the home page of the town website. It reads: “We have become aware that due to an inadvertent error by our printer, we received some Annual Town Election ballots for the Town of Lexington, rather than for the Town of Sudbury. These were mailed in the normal course, and we have been informed that a handful of voters have received the incorrect ballot. At this time, we do not believe this is a widespread problem. Please contact the Town Clerk with any questions at 978-639-3351 or [email protected]. We will update this notice with additional information as needed.”
Klein noted that her office “does not have the capacity” to send a notice about the error to every voter sent a mail ballot.
If a voter has returned the wrong ballot, she said there is “no way to cure” that vote and it will not be counted. Mailed ballots are opened and the ballots are removed and separated from the yellow signed envelope on Election Day, not before. Those ballots are fed into the vote-counting tabulators on Election Day.
“I think when people go to fill out their ballot, they will notice it is not a Sudbury ballot. It says Town of Lexington and includes town meeting candidates for precincts. It looks nothing like our ballot,” Klein said.
Klein said this is the first time she has experienced a printer’s error with ballots, though such errors have happened in other towns.
The election is Monday, March 30. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and all Sudbury precincts vote at the Fairbank Community Center gym, 40 Fairbank Rd.
Mail ballots must be received in the clerk’s office by 8 p.m. March 30. Mail ballots can be returned to the ballot dropbox behind Town Hall; they cannot be returned to the polling place on Election Day. Request a mail ballot here.
