Some voters casting ballots at Fresno County vote centers this week are seeing a startling typo on their printed ballot: it reads “Fowler Unified School District” where it should say “Fresno Unified School District.” County election officials say the mistake, found on ballots produced by electronic ballot-marking devices, will not change how the vote is actually counted.
The Fresno County Elections Department identified the printing error affecting a limited number of ballots printed at vote centers, according to abc30.com. The glitch occurs only when a voter marks a ballot using one of the county's electronic ballot-marking machines, and the printed paper incorrectly states “Fowler Unified School District” instead of “Fresno Unified School District.” Despite the wrong name on the page, the outlet reports that the ballot will still record the voter's choice in the correct Fresno Unified School District Trustee contest, and no other contests on the ballot are affected.
Which Races Are Involved
The typo touches three specific contests: the Fresno Unified School District Trustee races for Areas 1, 3 and 4, per kmph.com. Fresno County Registrar of Voters James A. Kus has apologized for the confusion and encouraged voters with questions to contact the Fresno County Elections Department, the same report states. As first detailed by the New York Post, Kus has also assured voters that the printing mistake will not interfere with how ballots are counted.
Voters who want to avoid the misprint entirely have an option: they can request a ballot printed on demand at any vote center instead of using a ballot-marking device, abc30.com's reporting notes. Ballots printed on demand and vote-by-mail ballots do not show the typographical error at all. The county also plans to post signs at every ballot-marking device explaining the glitch so voters are not caught off guard mid-vote.
What Happens After Election Day
Once polls close, the county intends to dig deeper into whether the error had any real-world impact. Additional precincts in each of Fresno Unified School District Trustee Areas 1, 3 and 4 will be drawn for auditing as part of the county's Manual Tally process, the same kmph.com report says. Looking ahead, officials say they will add another manual proofing step for ballots printed by ballot-marking devices before future elections go live.
Fresno County is separately planning a broader fix unrelated to this specific typo: a complete review of all addresses countywide using its Regional Address database, set to begin early next year, according to sjvsun.com. In a separate incident, the county said 295 voters in total received an incorrect ballot after about 1,000 addresses were updated and those voters were inadvertently assigned to the wrong precinct. In that earlier case, the county said 41 incorrect ballots were tied to the Fresno Unified School District Area 6 race, won by trustee Claudia Cazares by 93 votes, and officials said the ballots cast by the 295 affected voters could not be identified or changed because voting is secret. The county attributed that episode to human decisions rather than any malfunction of its voting systems.
What State Law Says About Defective Ballots
California election law anticipates problems like misprinted ballots. Under Elections Code section 15210, published by the California Legislative Information site, a voted ballot that is torn, bent or otherwise defective must be corrected so every vote cast can be counted by automatic tabulating equipment, and officials must make a true duplicate copy of the ballot if necessary. Separately, state law under SB 1328 requires that once a ballot-on-demand system is approved, the vendor must notify the California secretary of state and affected local elections officials in writing within 24 hours of discovering a flaw or defect that could affect voting or vote tallying, according to the same legislative archive.
The printing mix-up surfaces amid heightened national attention on California's ballot processing. A federal judge recently rejected a Trump administration request to set aside roughly 20,000 disputed California ballots pending citizenship verification, warning that halting their processing would wreak havoc on the midterm elections, as reported by the New York Post. That fight, led by federal officials who argued citizen votes were being diluted, involves a separate legal dispute over noncitizen voting claims and is not connected to the Fresno Unified printing error described here.
