About ten thousand voters of Los Angeles County are urged to correct their mail-in ballot errors.
Every year after the election, the county registrar of voters sends another letter informing some voters that their mail-in ballots that have already been sent or dropped off in a drop box have not been included in the ballot counting process.
According to the LA County Registrar of Voters, about 10,000 voters in the jurisdiction received a cure letter for a mail-in ballot error. The two biggest errors are mail-in ballots that are not signed and cases where the signature on file with the office is different from that on the ballot.
In Council District 10 of the LA City Council, a total of 123 cases were missing signatures, and about 300 were found to have signature discrepancy.
The letter includes information about the date of the vote, the date of receipt, the name, contact address, and telephone number. Among them, about 40 to 50 were Korean Americans.
The problem is that the voters who received the letters are ignoring them or finding them annoying and are not taking action to correct them. The authorities are informing voters via phone calls and email, but the reality is that it is not having much of an effect.
The Registrar of Voters said, “This is a last-minute effort to include even the final vote in the ballot counting,” and “However, we are concerned that there are not many voters who respond to the error correction as interest wanes after the election.”
Grace Yoo, who ran for City Council for District 10, said, “If the signature is not properly done, the vote will not be counted,” and “I hope that every single vote of Korean Americans gets counted, as much as we hope for the election results.”
These votes may play a casting vote in a close election, and those of Korean Americans could have an impact on the political power of the Korean-American community.
The California Secretary of State’s Office requires that the county registrar of voters send a letter to correct the error by December 5, eight days before the final announcement of the election results.
To check whether your mail-in ballot has been included in the vote count, you can do so through the status check page (lavote.gov/av_inquiry).
If your vote is not included in the ballot counting or you recently received a letter about an error, you can follow the guidelines to correct the error. While error corrections can be made in writing, they can also be made by phone (text “LA Ballot Cure” to 28683) or by email (votebymail@rrcc.lacounty.gov).
For areas outside of LA County, you can process it through the individual county election offices.
BY BRIAN CHOI, HOONSIK WOO [woo.hoonsik@koreadaily.com]
