Mistakes found in Sonoma County’s Spanish language voter guide

Sonoma County’s voter information guide, mailed out to voters about a month ago, listed the wrong information on one of the guide’s Spanish language pages, the county has announced.

The mistakes contained old information specific to a previous special election in Windsor, the county announced in a press release Friday.

The ninth page in the guide, listed as “49-F-VBM2-S,” mistakenly told voters to return their mail-in ballots on April 12 instead of June 7, which is Election Day for the state’s 2022 primary.

The guide also referred to “votantes de Windsor” instead of “votantes activos del Condado de Sonoma” — Windsor voters instead of Sonoma County voters.

“We apologize profusely for the mistakes, and we’ll make sure we work on our procedures to make sure it does not happen again in the future,” said Deva Proto, the county’s voter registrar.

The mistake was discovered between Thursday night and Friday, just days ahead of the June 7 primary, said Proto.

The short timing meant the county could not mail out a corrected guide, Proto said. She added that all other pages in the guide have the correct information.

The county uses a certified translator to translate the voter information guide from English to Spanish. Both versions are then proofread before being sent to the printer, Proto said.

Proto said the mistake occurred when the voter registrar’s office asked the printer to make a change elsewhere in the guide and as a result text on “49-F-VBM2-S” was reverted to text from the April 12 election.

“It was a miscommunication between our office and the printer’s office. … We didn’t catch it,” Proto said.

You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.