A representative with a printing company in the Richmond area says they’re partially to blame for thousands of erroneous voter postcards in Northern Virginia ahead of the midterm elections.
Choice Printing Services was tasked with creating and sending the postcards out to voters, but around 60,000 voters in Northern and Southwest Virginia received incorrect notices for the midterms coming Nov. 8.
The postcards were meant to tell voters where to cast ballots and what congressional and legislative district they’re in, to avoid confusion after last year’s redistricting.
In Northern Virginia, roughly 31,100 postcards were sent out without information on town elections. When the postcards were reprinted, they included wrong voting locations.
Lainee Biliunas, who co-owns Choice Printing, told the Virginia Mercury on Tuesday that the problems on the company’s end weren’t political.
“It wasn’t like a conscious error where somebody manipulated information,” Biliunas told the Virginia Mercury. “We’re very transparent. People make mistakes. Things happen. I do know that it was rectified right away because it was a serious problem.”
Elections Commissioner Susan Beals told the Virginia Mercury that the errors in Fairfax and Prince William counties happened after voting locations were “kept static on the print job” instead of changing to match up with a voter’s polling place.
Still, some Democrats have voiced concerns that the printing problems were representative of larger issues.
Rep. Don Scott, who represents the 80th District that includes areas around Richmond, tweeted about the problems being “either gross incompetence or purposeful undermining of the election process.”
It’s sad that @JasonMiyaresVA and @GovernorVA are awol in what now appears to be either gross incompetence or purposeful undermining of the election process. The Governor is all over the country campaigning and not fulfilling his basic responsibilities here in Virginia. https://t.co/ZZEO9W1rUz
— Don Scott (@DonScott757) October 21, 2022
Scott and State Senator Louise Lucas called on Gov. Glenn Youngkin directly when discussing the errors.
This is voter suppression. @GovernorVA – you need to start spending time in Virginia and supervising your team so these types of incompetent errors don’t happen. Unless they are intentional… 🤨 https://t.co/dQ3cm1Q16f
— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) October 21, 2022
The state did a check on a sample of the postcards, the Virginia Mercury reported, but the errors weren’t caught in time.
WTOP reached out to Choice Printing Services for a comment, but didn’t hear back ahead of this article’s publishing.
