Vancouver, WA ‒ While processing thousands of ballots submitted for the Nov. 8 general election, the Clark County Elections Office discovered an error on an extremely small number of ballots that were printed from the county’s website, marked and returned.

The error was confined to one race and one precinct. The outcome of the race will not be affected by the nine ballots with the error.

Auditor Greg Kimsey regrets the error. Both candidates have been notified of the mistake.

Elections provides two types of ballots ‒ ballots that are mailed to voters and ballots on the county website that voters must print, mark and mail in or drop at a collection site. Typically, voters print ballots from the website when their mailed ballots become lost or damaged. Clark County does not offer online voting.

In this month’s general election, the Elections Office mailed 272,832 ballots to registered voters in 252 precincts. Approximately 2,300 voters printed ballots from the county website and returned them.

In Precinct 100, the 49th Legislative District Position 2 race between Monica Jurado Stonier and Alishia Topper was inadvertently omitted from the online ballot. The nine online ballots returned from that precinct did not include the Stonier-Topper race.

As of Thursday, preliminary returns show Stonier leading with 26,459 votes, or 55.13 percent of votes, compared with Topper’s 21,533 votes, or 44.87 percent of votes.

Aside from the online ballot for Precinct 100, all other online ballots and all mailed ballots correctly listed all measures, races and propositions.

“I am sorry these nine voters did not have this race on the ballot they obtained online,” Kimsey said. “We have developed and will implement procedures to try to prevent this from happening in future elections."

“I urge Clark County residents to register to vote and cast their ballots,” he said. “I deeply regret this mistake and will do all I can to avoid such problems in the years to come.”